Gary Strauss

USA TODAY

Crude oil prices settled below $60 a barrel Thursday as renewed selling pressure pushed benchmark prices to new five year lows. And the carnage may not be over yet.

West Texas Intermediate crude fell 2.6% to $59.36, its lowest level since July 2009. Brent crude oil dropped 1.4% to $63.34.

The slide came after Saudi Arabia, the world's No. 2 oil producer after the U.S., suggested it would not cut production to prop up prices. Separately, Bank of America warned that crude oil prices could fall to $50 a barrel in 2015 as North American output, coupled with increased production in Iraq and Libya, hits markets already awash in supply.

West Texas crude peaked this year at about $107 a barrel in June. It's now down about 44%.

"We're going appreciatively lower,'' says Tom Kloza, senior analyst for the Oil Price Information Service. "We could see $45 this month. We haven't found a bottom yet."

Crude's slide pushed gasoline futures down 1.3% to $1.62 a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange, which is likely to spell more relief at the pump for motorists.

Nationally, gasoline now averages $2.62 a gallon, down 30 cents from just a month ago and 64 cents below last Dec. 11. Prices are expected to come down to $2.50 or less a gallon before year's end.

"This represents the line that, now crossed, oil company execs aren't sleeping at night, as motorists count the bundles of cash they've got left after each fill-up. And in North Dakota and Texas, oil workers are hunting down the proverbial Grinch, hoping they'll still have a Christmas worth celebrating," says Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst at gasbuddy.com.

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