Brent Trades $12.69 Above WTI, and Canada Sells the Cheaper Barrel
Brent’s November contract settled $12.69 above WTI’s November contract on Monday, September 28, 2026, roughly double the $6.43 that separated the same two contracts at the end of August. Alberta’s barrels are priced off the cheaper of those two benchmarks, and its heavy grade is discounted again from there. One Canadian barrel escapes that, and it is not an Alberta one.
Monday’s settlement put the two November contracts $12.69 apart
Monday’s prices below are the volume-weighted price of trades in the 2:28 to 2:30 p.m. ET window, NYMEX’s documented settlement method for WTI, which we apply to the Brent leg as well so both sides of the spread are read off the same clock. The August 31 prices, and every session in the daily table below, are finalised daily settlements. Trade data is from Yahoo Finance.
| Contract (USD per barrel) | Aug 31, 2026 | Sep 28, 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brent, Nov contract | $90.49 | $105.27 | +16.33% |
| WTI, Nov contract | $84.06 | $92.58 | +10.14% |
| Brent less WTI | $6.43 | $12.69 | just about doubled |
Both of those moves are measured in US dollars. The widening was not gradual, and it did not happen this weekend either.
| Session (USD per barrel) | Brent | WTI | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 18 | $103.87 | $96.08 | $7.79 |
| Sep 21 | $100.34 | $92.36 | $7.98 |
| Sep 22 | $99.32 | $90.58 | $8.74 |
| Sep 23 | $103.25 | $92.18 | $11.07 |
| Sep 24 | $106.63 | $94.67 | $11.96 |
| Sep 25 | $104.22 | $92.30 | $11.92 |
| Sep 28 | $105.27 | $92.58 | $12.69 |
Brent’s November contract less WTI’s November contract, daily settlement prices. The gap just about doubled over the month, and more than half of that widening came in the two sessions of September 23 and 24, before Iran made its offer. Sources: NYMEX and ICE, from Yahoo Finance trade data.
The rejection is the news peg, and the gap was already wide before the offer existed
On Friday, September 25, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the UN General Assembly in New York that Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and return to nuclear talks. “If certain conditions are met, the Strait of Hormuz will be open at the end of seven days, and talks will be restarted,” he said. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei set out the conditions: an end to US “acts of aggression”, the lifting of the naval blockade and economic warfare, and the release of Iranian assets. On Saturday, September 26, Donald Trump turned it down. “They made a proposal but I rejected it,” he told reporters, in remarks first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
That is why oil is on the front page this morning. It is not why the spread is where it is. The gap widened by $3.22 on September 23 and 24, before Iran made the offer at all, and it stood at $11.92 when Friday settled. Monday, the single session since the rejection, added $0.77. What the weekend did was remove the possibility that the gap closes soon.
The divergence is visible inside that single session. In Asian hours, at 2:23 a.m. ET, WTI’s November contract was at $94.14 and Brent’s at $107.34, according to CNBC Africa. Both gave most of it back through the day. Measured window price to window price, our own numbers at both ends, WTI finished 28 cents above Friday and Brent $1.05 above it. Same headline, same session, and the gap between the two barrels widened 77 cents on the strength of it.
The strait itself is technically working. Vessels made 132 transits between September 21 and 27, up from 116 the week before, according to maritime intelligence platform MarineTraffic, in a report by Al Jazeera that puts pre-war traffic at roughly 130 crossings a day. Our arithmetic: about 19 crossings a day, close to 15% of the rate before the war that began in late February 2026, when the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran. Open, barely.
On the spot series a wide Brent premium is a 2026 pattern, not a one-week event
The futures gap above and the spot gap below measure different things. The US Energy Information Administration’s daily spot series for Europe Brent Spot Price FOB and Cushing OK WTI Spot Price FOB prices a barrel delivered now, the November contract prices one delivered in five weeks, and with the market steeply backwardated the immediate barrel carries a premium the deferred one does not. On September 22, the EIA’s latest reading, Brent spot was $114.89 and WTI spot $96.41, a spot gap of $18.48, against a futures gap of $8.74 the same day. The two grades are not backwardated equally, and that is the mechanism: on that date Brent spot stood $15.57 above Brent’s November contract while WTI spot stood $5.83 above WTI’s. What is scarce is the seaborne barrel available now.
That spot reading sits in the 99.3rd percentile of the 2,890 daily readings since January 2015, on our calculation, and the company it keeps is the striking part. Nineteen readings since 2015 are at or above it, and eighteen of them are from 2026: four in March reaching $23.83 on March 31, nine in April reaching $25.94 on April 8, and five in September reaching $24.22 on September 16. The only pre-2026 reading above it is $54.34 on April 20, 2020, the day WTI settled negative. Like for like, the median daily spot gap in 2026 is $6.62 against $3.74 for 2015 through 2025. The year is not uniformly wide, and that is the point: it arrives in episodes. June’s monthly average gap was 59 cents, narrower than the decade’s median, and September’s ran to $15.10. A wide Brent premium is something this year keeps producing rather than something last week invented, and every episode of it post-dates the war.
Alberta’s barrel sits $22.87 below Brent, and Newfoundland’s does not
The full distance from the barrel the headlines quote to the barrel Alberta clears is the Brent-to-WCS gap, and it went $19.50 in June, $16.60 in July and $22.87 in August, widening by more than six dollars in a single month. Western Canadian Select is the grade most Alberta producers sell, and the Government of Alberta’s WCS oil price dashboard publishes monthly averages through August 2026.
| Month 2026 (USD per barrel) | Brent (EIA) | WTI (Alberta) | WCS (Alberta) | WTI less WCS | Brent less WCS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June | $85.40 | $84.81 | $65.90 | $18.91 | $19.50 |
| July | $83.76 | $80.46 | $67.16 | $13.30 | $16.60 |
| August | $91.08 | $83.90 | $68.21 | $15.69 | $22.87 |
Alberta’s August WTI average of $83.90 is the same number as the EIA’s own August average for Cushing WTI. The two governments agree on the benchmark, so every dollar of disagreement in that table is the grade.
The WTI-to-WCS leg, the discount Canadians usually argue about, is close to its own normal. August’s $15.69 sits above the $13.84 median of the 2015 to 2025 portion of Alberta’s 260-month series, which runs back to January 2005, above the $14.31 trailing twelve-month average, and well inside the $45.93 record of November 2018. Modestly wide, not unusual. The leg that moved this month is the one above it.
Not every Canadian barrel is on the wrong side of that. Newfoundland and Labrador’s offshore fields produce light crude, and the province values it against Brent rather than WTI: the province’s own oil production bulletin puts July 2026 production at 8.1 million barrels, up 15.7% from July 2025, and quotes the Brent price beside it. Alberta is the other case: 85.0% of its July 2026 production was non-conventional, which is the oil sands, on the province’s own production table. Some of that is upgraded into synthetic crude that prices nearer WTI, so 85% is the oil sands share and not the WCS share.
Brent, WTI and Western Canadian Select, monthly averages in US dollars per barrel. Sources: US EIA (Brent spot) and the Government of Alberta OilPrices table (WTI, WCS).
Which producers can live comfortably on a realised barrel two discounts below the headline is a different question from where the headline trades, and it is the one behind our ranking of Canadian energy stocks.
The Canadian energy equities did not follow the barrel
Over the same window in which Brent’s November contract rose 16.33% in US dollars, the Toronto-listed energy names went several directions at once. Closing prices below are Yahoo Finance data, and these are price changes in Canadian dollars, not total returns.
| Security (CAD per share) | Aug 31 | Sep 28 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| iShares S&P/TSX Capped Energy ETF (XEG) | $28.43 | $28.18 | -0.88% |
| Suncor Energy (SU) | $92.73 | $97.46 | +5.10% |
| Cenovus Energy (CVE) | $44.52 | $44.12 | -0.90% |
| Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ) | $69.49 | $67.38 | -3.04% |
| Imperial Oil (IMO) | $182.14 | $173.45 | -4.77% |
The sector ETF fell while the barrel rose, and the dispersion inside the group is wide. Suncor and Imperial Oil are both integrated producers and they moved in opposite directions by nearly ten percentage points in Canadian dollars.
We looked at a different version of this disconnect earlier in the month, when September’s crude spike happened at the front of the futures curve. That piece covered the time dimension of the gap between the barrel and the equities. This one covers the grade.
A weaker loonie did part of the work the grade did not
Canadian producers sell in US dollars and report in Canadian ones, and the currency moved in their favour over this same window. On the Bank of Canada’s daily exchange rates, USD/CAD went from 1.3866 on August 31 to 1.4168 on September 28, which is the loonie falling from 72.12 to 70.58 US cents. A rising USD/CAD and a falling loonie are the same event described from opposite ends.
Run WTI’s November contract through those two rates and the barrel a Canadian producer books goes from $116.56 to $131.17 in Canadian dollars, a gain of 12.53% in Canadian dollars against 10.14% in US dollars. That is our arithmetic on the two series, and 2.39 of those points came from the currency rather than the commodity. It is the same mechanism we traced through the loonie’s slide earlier this month.
The month paid Canadian producers more, and still cost them the premium
Canadian producers were paid more in September, by 12.53% in Canadian dollars on the WTI-linked barrel, and they sat out a Brent premium that averaged $7.18 a barrel through August and reached $12.69 by the end of September. The size of what Alberta’s grade left on the table is the story here, not a loss.
The currency did 2.39 of those 12.53 points, which makes the rate calendar the scheduled event that bears most directly on the better half of this month. Statistics Canada publishes July GDP at 8:30 a.m. ET this morning, Tuesday September 29. The Bank of Canada’s next decision lands October 28 with the policy rate at 2.25%, unchanged since October 30, 2025, and our own derivation from Montreal Exchange one-month CORRA futures settlement prices puts 54% odds on a 25 basis point hike, with 13.56 basis points priced in.
Data as of September 28, 2026, except where an earlier date is named.
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. Brent and WTI prices are the November 2026 delivery contract on both ends of every comparison, so no figure here is priced across a contract roll. Monday’s settlement prices are the volume-weighted price of trades in the two minutes to 2:30 p.m. ET, which is the exchange’s settlement method for WTI and which we apply to the Brent leg as well so both sides of the spread are read off the same clock. Earlier sessions are finalised daily settlements. The longer history of the Brent and WTI gap is a different measure and is labelled as such throughout: it is the US Energy Information Administration’s daily spot series, Europe Brent Spot Price FOB and Cushing OK WTI Spot Price FOB, which prices a barrel delivered now rather than in November. Monthly Western Canadian Select and WTI averages are the Government of Alberta OilPrices table; the monthly Brent line is the EIA series averaged by month so all three sit on one basis. Newfoundland and Labrador production is that province’s own monthly bulletin. The exchange rate is the Bank of Canada daily rate, series FXUSDCAD. Equity closing prices are Yahoo Finance and the changes shown are price changes, not total returns. Figures identified in the text as our arithmetic are ours: the spread series and its widening, the percentile and median of the EIA gap, the Western Canadian Select differential statistics, the barrel converted into Canadian dollars, the daily transit rate, and the odds priced for the October 28 Bank of Canada decision, which are derived from Montreal Exchange one-month CORRA futures settlement prices and are not a published consensus. Alberta publishes monthly averages and its latest month is August 2026, so no September figure for Western Canadian Select appears anywhere in this piece.
