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By Bloomberg

Oil in London fell for a second day as Saudi Arabia said its efforts to focus on market share are working, adding to speculation that OPEC will maintain its output quota when it meets later this week.

Brent futures dropped as much as 0.3 percent, extending Monday’s 1 percent decline. Demand is picking up and supply is slowing, Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said Monday as he arrived in Vienna for the June 5 meeting. U.S. crude inventories probably fell by 2.5 million barrels through May 29, according to a Bloomberg survey before an Energy Information Administration report Wednesday.

Oil’s recovery from a six-year low in January is stalling amid speculation a global glut will persist. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will keep a collective quota of 30 million barrels a day, according to all but one of 34 traders and analysts in a separate Bloomberg survey.

“I doubt that we’ll see any change to OPEC policy,” David Lennox, a resource analyst at Fat Prophets in Sydney, said by phone. “The market is going to hold until the results of that meeting is announced and then we’ll see where we go from there. We’ve still got high stockpiles in the U.S. and that’s going to keep a lid on any price rally.”

Brent for July settlement decreased as much as 17 cents to $64.71 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange and was at $64.79 at 2:17 p.m. Sydney time. It fell 68 cents to $64.88 on Monday. The European benchmark traded at a premium of $4.60 to West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. marker grade.

OPEC Output

WTI for July delivery was 3 cents lower at $60.17 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract slid 10 cents to $60.20 on Monday. The volume of all futures traded was about 65 percent below the 100-day average.

“Demand in the second half of the year will be better than now,” al-Naimi said. The minister declined to answer a question on his preferred price range for oil and said he didn’t know if OPEC would agree to maintain its output quota.

Saudi Arabia led a November decision by the group to keep the target unchanged, resisting calls to cut output and support prices. Iran will hold talks on reducing production with countries that have pumped more since sanctions were imposed on the Gulf nation, the Oil Ministry’s news agency Shana reported, citing Mehdi Asali, National Representative to OPEC.

OPEC supplies about 40 percent of the world’s crude. Its 12 members pumped 31.58 million barrels of oil a day in May, exceeding the collective target for a 12th consecutive month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Crude stockpiles in the U.S., the world’s biggest oil consumer, probably dropped for a fifth week, according to the survey before the report from the EIA. Supplies are at 479.36 million barrels, near the highest level in 85 years.