Crude Treads Water as Saudi Sanctions Counter Stockpile Gains - Bloomberg

Crude Treads Water as Saudi Sanctions Counter Stockpile Gains - Bloomberg:

Oil prices rose slightly as tension over U.S. sanctions against Saudi Arabia countered a jump in American crude stockpiles.

Futures in New York rose 0.4 percent after the Trump administration issued financial penalties against 17 top Saudi officials over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, hours after the kingdom charged 11 people for the murder. The geopolitical strife outweighed a government report showing the biggest weekly crude-storage increase since February 2017.

“These massive crude oil builds that we’ve seen week after week in the U.S. sucked all of the geopolitical risk out of the crude oil price,” said Rob Thummel, managing director at Tortoise, which manages $16 billion in energy-related assets. The announcement on sanctions “puts some risk back into the market.”