By Samantha Sunne
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. crude fell modestly on Friday while global Brent gained support from market uncertainty over the future of Saudi oil production following King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz's death.
Reports of a partial shutdown at BP's oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana, added weight to a bearish U.S. market which saw heavy losses a day ago, when the Energy Information Administration announced the largest build in crude inventory in at least 14 years.
Brent was up 30 cents at $48.82 by 11:20 a.m. EST (1620 GMT), while U.S. crude fell 21 cents to $46.10. The spread between the two benchmarks widened to as much as $3.27, the largest in 12 days.
A refinery disruption "will only exacerbate the situation from storage yesterday," said Bob Yawger of Mizuho Securities USA. "That story even trumps the death of the king of the biggest oil producing country basically in the world."
Genscape, an energy industry information service, said key units at the plant were not operating Friday.
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, who died early Friday, was succeeded by his brother Salman, who is expected to continue an OPEC policy of keeping oil output steady to protect the cartel's market share from rival producers.
Whether or not the new king signifies real change, Mizuho's Yawger said, a big event like that tends to be bullish for the market.
"Any time there's uncertainty in the market, you tend to have support," he said.
WTI pared some losses as the National Association of Realtors said U.S. home sales rose in December, which may indicate a recovering housing market..
The U.S. has seen growing demand this year, but that has been outweighed by the global oil supply glut, analysts said.
Booming U.S. production has turned the United States from the world's biggest oil importer into one of the top producers, pumping more than 9 million barrels per day.
Data from the EIA on Thursday showed U.S. oil inventory at its highest point for this time of year in at least 80 years.
To combat soaring output and falling prices, some oil exporters, such as Venezuela, wanted the 12-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to cut output in order to support prices and revenues.
Yet, led by Saudi Arabia, OPEC announced last November it would keep output steady at 30 million barrels per day.
(Additional reporting by Robert Gibbons in New York, Himanshu Ojha in London and Henning Gloystein and Florence Tan in Singapore; Editing by David Evans and Bernadette)
