Canadian Energy Stocks Slide as Crude Falls. The 2027 Oil Curve Never Believed the Spike
Canadian energy stocks are the soft spot of an otherwise quiet market this morning. The S&P/TSX Composite is close to flat at 35,781.16, down 0.07%, while the S&P 500 sits at 7,697.68 (up 0.62%) and the NASDAQ at 26,794.28 (up 1.02%). The producers are doing the losing. Crude is in a fourth consecutive session of declines, and the sector ETF is off nearly 2%.
Data as of 9:44 a.m. ET, Monday September 21, 2026.
| Name | Ticker | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| iShares S&P/TSX Capped Energy ETF | XEG.TO | $28.46 | -1.90% |
| Whitecap Resources | WCP.TO | $18.30 | -2.97% |
| Canadian Natural Resources | CNQ.TO | $68.17 | -1.76% |
| Suncor Energy | SU.TO | $95.47 | -1.66% |
| Cenovus Energy | CVE.TO | $44.88 | -1.60% |
| Tourmaline Oil | TOU.TO | $59.94 | -1.45% |
| Imperial Oil | IMO.TO | $179.61 | -1.21% |
The more interesting number today is not the spot price at all. It is that September’s entire crude spike happened at the front of the futures curve and almost nowhere else.
Why crude is falling
Crude fell for a fourth consecutive session Monday, and what changed over the weekend was the diplomacy. According to CNBC’s report on crude falling back below $100 per barrel, President Donald Trump told Fox News he would probably be open to meeting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the UN General Assembly this week. Trump has also decided against bombing the Iran-allied Houthis for the time being, despite pleas from Saudi Arabia, according to Trump administration officials who spoke to The New York Times.
Physical supply has held up better than the headlines implied. JPMorgan analysts wrote in a September 18 note that “Middle East oil flows remain surprisingly strong despite the disruption to Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline.” Total oil flows averaged 17.1 million barrels per day over the past 10 days, which is still 6.1 million bpd below the 2025 average.
The crude price on your screen is two different contracts
Before the numbers, a caveat that is worth more than it looks.
The continuous front-month series that most sites and data feeds label “WTI crude” tracked the October contract all last week. Its closes on September 14, 15, 16 and 17 were $101.39, $105.83, $102.43 and $101.91, which are the October contract’s closes exactly. Today that same series prints the November contract, near $93.
So a screen comparing roughly $93 today against about $100 late last week is comparing two different delivery months. The resulting drop of about 7.5% is mostly the switch, not a price move. Because the curve is in backwardation, with every later month cheaper than the one before it, rolling forward one month mechanically knocks about $3.80 off the printed price. Our own intraday data file recorded that -7.56% this morning for the same reason, which is why everything below is quoted by contract name instead.
Like for like, the October contract is $96.82. CNBC had it at $97.59 at 7:48 a.m. ET, with Brent near $101.
The spike never reached 2027
Here is the central computation. Each row is one contract priced on three days, so there is no roll distortion in it. September 4 is the last settlement before the Houthi strikes on Saudi energy infrastructure. September 15 is the highest front-month close of the episode.
| Contract | Sep 4 | Sep 15 peak | Now | Sep 4 to peak | Peak to now |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WTI October 2026 | $91.48 | $105.83 | $96.82 | +15.69% | -8.51% |
| WTI November 2026 | $88.57 | $100.75 | $93.01 | +13.75% | -7.68% |
| WTI December 2026 | $85.46 | $95.51 | $89.61 | +11.76% | -6.18% |
| WTI June 2027 | $74.70 | $78.41 | $78.35 | +4.97% | -0.08% |
| WTI December 2027 | $71.23 | $72.62 | $73.65 | +1.95% | +1.42% |
Read the last two columns downward. The spike decays smoothly from 15.69% at the front to 1.95% fifteen months out. In dollars, the peak added $14.35 to the October contract and $1.39 to the December 2027 contract.
The unwind is just as lopsided. The June 2027 contract has given back essentially nothing (-0.08%). The December 2027 contract is actually higher than it was at the peak (+1.42%) and higher than it was before the strikes, at $73.65 against $71.23, a gain of 3.40%.
The whole WTI futures curve on three days: September 4 before the strikes on Saudi energy infrastructure, September 15 at the peak, and live on September 21, 2026. The spike lifted the front of the curve and left 2027 almost untouched. Source: NYMEX Light Sweet Crude Oil futures, priced by individual contract symbol.
Why the equities moved like the back of the curve
This is the answer to the thing that puzzled people all month, which is why TSX energy names barely moved while crude ran from roughly $91 to $106 and back.
A share price discounts many years of expected cash flow, not one month of barrels. That mechanism is worth understanding on its own terms, and we walk through it in our guide to what moves a stock price. A producer valued off years of production is being priced against the part of the curve that barely moved, not the part that spiked.
The arc in XEG.TO, the cleanest single proxy for the sector, is exactly that. It closed at $28.53 on September 4, reached $30.00 on September 15 and sits at $28.46 now. That is a gain of 5.15% into the peak, against the 13.75% the November contract added over the same two dates, so the sector captured roughly 37% of the move. Coming back down it has fallen 5.13%. Net across the whole episode: -0.25%, against +5.01% for the November contract and +3.40% for December 2027.
Be careful with that comparison. The equities did not track the back of the curve exactly. They moved more than the back end and far less than the front. What the numbers do support is that the sector priced the spike as temporary from the beginning, which is the same judgement the futures curve made.
That is also an update to our piece on Friday about oil falling back below $100 while TSX energy barely blinked. On Friday the sector had not given anything back. Today it is giving some of it back. That does not contradict the thesis, it completes it: what went up modestly is coming down modestly.
The toll roads held up, the producers did not
The split inside the sector this morning is the clearest illustration of the same idea. The three large midstream names are barely down: Enbridge at $67.93 (-0.32%), TC Energy at $85.43 (-0.71%) and Pembina Pipeline at $65.99 (-0.84%). Set that against Whitecap at -2.97% and Canadian Natural at -1.76%. Fee-based volume businesses have less of the barrel price in their earnings than producers do, so they have less of it to give back.
The curve and the EIA agree on where this settles
The futures market is not alone in pricing crude well below today’s spot. The US Energy Information Administration’s Short-Term Energy Outlook, released September 9, 2026, forecasts Brent averaging around $90 a barrel in the second half of 2026, $77 in the second quarter of 2027 and $67 in the second half of 2027. Brent normally trades above WTI, so that late-2027 forecast is more bearish than the $73.65 the curve is quoting for December 2027.
Two independent bodies, the futures market and the US government’s own forecasting agency, both put crude far below today’s spot by late 2027. That is a useful number for anyone sizing up a producer, because $73.65 is within a few dollars of the $70 stress test behind our ranking of Canadian energy stocks on what survives $70 oil. The curve is now evidence for that screening criterion rather than a coincidence.
What would change it
The de-escalation is not settled. Trump told Fox he is in a “deciding mode” and that “very big things” are going to happen in the near future regarding the US-Iran war. And the same JPMorgan note put those flows at 6.1 million bpd below the 2025 average, so the supply picture is still degraded even at its most resilient reading.
What the curve tells us is narrower than a forecast. It tells us what the market was willing to pay for a barrel in December 2027 while the front month was at $105.83, and the answer was $72.62. That is the number to watch if the news turns again.
Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Market and futures data as of 9:44 a.m. ET, September 21, 2026.
