Oil Falls 6.6% After Hormuz Talks, Canadian Energy Stocks Only 2.5%
The December WTI contract traded at $97.18 a barrel at 9:51 a.m. ET on Monday, down $6.89 or 6.62% from Friday’s settlement-window price of $104.07. The drop came after a weekend in which Qatari mediators hosted an Iranian delegation to discuss a plan that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
A 6.6% move in crude is the headline. It is not what happened to Canadian energy stocks, and it is not what happened to the barrels that set their value. The December 2027 contract fell 2.75%. The iShares S&P/TSX Capped Energy ETF fell 2.54%, and the steepest fall in the table below was Cenovus at 3.43%. This morning was a front-month event, and how far down the delivery curve it reached is the whole story.
It is also a drop out of a long climb. The same December contract printed $89.61 on the morning of September 21 and $104.07 in Friday’s settlement window, one a morning print and the other a settlement, $14.46 a barrel apart. This morning took $6.89 of that back.
The drop is concentrated in the barrels nearest delivery
Every delivery month trades as its own contract, so the move can be read month by month instead of as a single number. Below is Friday’s settlement window against Monday morning’s prints, each one a named NYMEX contract, so no comparison crosses a contract roll. December 2026 is the front month: trading in a CL contract ends three business days before the 25th of the month before delivery, which keeps December in front until about November 20, and the November contract has already expired.
| Delivery month | Friday settlement window | Monday morning | Change | Change, $/bbl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 2026 (front month) | $104.07 | $97.18 | -6.62% | -$6.89 |
| January 2027 | $102.17 | $95.58 | -6.45% | -$6.59 |
| February 2027 | $99.91 | $93.75 | -6.17% | -$6.16 |
| March 2027 | $97.47 | $91.84 | -5.78% | -$5.63 |
| April 2027 | $95.10 | $90.01 | -5.35% | -$5.09 |
| June 2027 | $90.94 | $86.84 | -4.51% | -$4.10 |
| September 2027 | $85.70 | $82.87 | -3.30% | -$2.83 |
| December 2027 | $81.85 | $79.60 | -2.75% | -$2.25 |
| December 2028 | $73.87 | $72.97 | -1.22% | -$0.90 |
NYMEX WTI by named contract. Friday’s column is the volume-weighted price of trades in the 2:28 to 2:30 p.m. ET settlement window on October 30, the exchange’s own settlement method, rebuilt from one-minute trade data. Monday’s column is the last one-minute trade print in each contract between 9:44 and 9:51 a.m. ET, an intraday price and not a settlement. Our calculation from Yahoo Finance trade data.
Read down the change column. The front month lost 6.62%. Twelve months further out, the December 2027 barrel lost 2.75%, and the December 2028 barrel lost 1.22%, which is 90 cents. In dollars, the front month’s drop is 3.06 times the December 2027 contract’s. In percentage terms it is 2.41 times it.
Liquidity is part of that. By the time of these prints the December 2026 contract had traded 139,242 lots on the session against 13,073 in December 2027 and 3,892 in December 2028, and months that trade a small fraction of the front month move less partly for that reason.
The same flattening shows up in the premium the prompt barrel carries over the deferred one. This curve is in backwardation, meaning each later delivery month is cheaper than the one before it, and December 2026 stood $22.22 above December 2027 on Friday. This morning that premium is $17.58, narrower by $4.64. Most of the day’s move sits in that single spread.
NYMEX WTI by named contract, Friday’s 2:28 to 2:30 p.m. ET settlement window against Monday’s intraday prints. Our calculation from Yahoo Finance trade data.
The far end of that line is where reserves get valued, and it barely moved. December 2028 crude was last at $72.97, which asks a different question of a producer than a $97 front month does: who still works when the barrel is in the low seventies. Our ranking of Canadian energy stocks on what survives $70 oil is built on that question rather than on this morning’s price.
Six weeks ago the back of the curve did not move. Now it has.
We ran this same measurement on the same contracts at 9:44 a.m. on Monday September 21, during a crude spike rather than a crude drop. Those were morning intraday prints too, which makes the two readings like for like: same contracts, same basis, same time of morning.
| Contract | Sep 21, 9:44 a.m. | Nov 2, 9:51 a.m. | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| December 2026 | $89.61 | $97.18 | +8.45% |
| June 2027 | $78.35 | $86.84 | +10.84% |
| December 2027 | $73.65 | $79.60 | +8.08% |
Intraday prints in the same named NYMEX contracts, six weeks apart. Our calculation from Yahoo Finance trade data.
Our September 21 reading of the oil futures curve found a spike that lived almost entirely at the front. It decayed from 15.69% at the front month to 1.95% in the December 2027 contract, which barely moved through the whole episode.
That is no longer the case. Across the six weeks since, the deferred barrel has risen nearly as much as the prompt barrel, and the June 2027 contract has risen more than either. Which puts this morning in proportion. A 6.6% headline drop took back part of the front month’s premium and left the six-week repricing of the back of the curve mostly intact: the December 2027 barrel gave up $2.25 today and still sits $5.95 above where it was on September 21.
The Canadian complex moved like the back of the curve, not the front
Toronto energy opened lower, and nowhere near the front month’s 6.62%.
| Name | Ticker | Monday price | Change | Friday’s change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cenovus Energy | CVE.TO | $44.21 | -3.43% | +1.69% |
| Whitecap Resources | WCP.TO | $18.98 | -3.26% | +0.05% |
| Canadian Natural Resources | CNQ.TO | $76.14 | -2.91% | +1.78% |
| Suncor Energy | SU.TO | $108.29 | -2.54% | +2.26% |
| iShares S&P/TSX Capped Energy ETF | XEG.TO | $30.72 | -2.54% | +1.71% |
| Imperial Oil | IMO.TO | $190.57 | -1.50% | +5.37% |
| Tourmaline Oil | TOU.TO | $67.71 | -1.35% | +0.94% |
| Enbridge | ENB.TO | $69.13 | +0.03% | +0.30% |
| TC Energy | TRP.TO | $90.03 | -0.14% | +0.11% |
Toronto listings in Canadian dollars. Monday’s prices are intraday at 10:18 a.m. ET against Friday’s closes. Price change, not total return. Our reading of Yahoo Finance data.
Set aside the two pipeline owners, Enbridge and TC Energy, and every name here gave up between a fifth and just over half of the front month’s percentage move: Cenovus 51.8% of it, Whitecap 49.2%, Canadian Natural 44.0%, Suncor and the sector ETF 38.4% each, Imperial Oil 22.7% and Tourmaline 20.4%.
The sector ETF is the cleanest single comparison, and it lands on the deferred barrel almost exactly. Its 2.54% fall sits 0.21 of a percentage point from the December 2027 contract’s 2.75%, and 4.08 points from the front month’s 6.62%.
Monday morning’s percentage change, three WTI delivery months against Toronto-listed energy names. Crude is intraday against Friday’s settlement window, equities intraday at 10:18 a.m. ET against Friday’s closes. The sector ETF holds the pipeline owners as well as the producers. Our calculation from Yahoo Finance data.
Our interpretation, offered as interpretation: a producer is valued on the whole stream of barrels it expects to sell rather than on the next one, so the stretch of the curve that moves its value is the stretch that did not move much this morning. That is reasoning about how an equity gets valued. It is not a claim about why any one of these names moved the amount it moved, and a single session is a single session.
A single session is precisely what is measured above: one morning, against one close. Widen it to five sessions and the same names on the same basis spread out, running from Imperial Oil up 0.96% since the October 26 close to Whitecap down 7.55%, against a 4.49% fall in the front month over that same stretch. Two of those names fell further than the front month did over the week, which is not a shape the curve explains. That is the reason to measure the session rather than the week, and the session is the cleaner read rather than the more flattering one.
Something else sits between the screen price and a Canadian producer’s revenue line: these companies are paid WTI less a heavy-oil differential, in Canadian dollars, and that discount moves on its own schedule. Our October reading of Canada’s oil discount has where it stood a few weeks ago.
The last column is Friday, when energy was the one sector working. Imperial Oil’s 5.37% stands apart from the rest of that column. Imperial reported its third-quarter results that day, and our analysis of Imperial Oil’s quarter works through the filing.
The rest of the tape went the other way
The energy drop is not setting the direction of the market. The S&P/TSX Composite stood at 35,933.30, up 0.88% from Friday’s close of 35,620.03. The iShares S&P/TSX Global Gold ETF was up 3.82% at $50.06.
Friday was close to the mirror image. The Composite fell 1.74%, energy was the strong sector with the ETF up 1.71%, while the gold ETF fell 5.30%. Two sessions, two tapes, with the same names on opposite sides of each.
What was reported over the weekend
The reporting behind the move is worth reading precisely rather than loosely. An Iranian delegation travelled to Doha to meet Qatari mediators, according to Al Jazeera’s account of the negotiations published November 1. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the discussions centred on a plan that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days and restart peace talks with the United States. Iran’s stated conditions, in the same report, are lifting recently imposed US sanctions, reinstating the oil waivers granted in June, reducing the US military presence in the region, recognising new shipping routes in the strait designated by Iran and Oman, and ending the conflict on all fronts.
The American side sounded less settled. Trump said over the weekend that negotiations were “going fine” but added that they were “not very reliable.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said talks were ongoing but that he was not aware of a timeframe. Separately, OPEC+ left its December output targets unchanged at a meeting on November 1.
That is a sequence, and the sequence is what we have. Crude opened the week lower after a weekend of reported talks, with the drop concentrated in the months nearest delivery and thinning steadily out to 2028. The shape is the part that can be measured, and the shape says the repricing of the barrels a Canadian producer will actually sell over the next two years is mostly still standing.
The front month gave back $6.89 this morning. The 2028 barrel gave back 90 cents. The Canadian complex moved with the second number.
The measurable thing to watch from here is the distance between those two ends. December 2026 stood $22.22 above December 2027 in Friday’s settlement window and $17.58 above it at this morning’s prints. That spread is where most of this morning’s move went, and it prints every session.
Data as of 9:44 to 9:51 a.m. ET for crude and 10:18 a.m. ET for the equities, Monday November 2, 2026.
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. Crude figures are NYMEX WTI light sweet crude oil futures, priced by named contract month rather than the continuous front-month series, so no comparison crosses a contract roll. Friday’s prices are the volume-weighted price of trades in the exchange’s 2:28 to 2:30 p.m. ET settlement window, rebuilt from one-minute trade data. Monday’s prices are the last one-minute trade print in each contract between 9:44 and 9:51 a.m. ET, intraday prices and not settlements. Equity figures are Toronto listings in Canadian dollars, read intraday at 10:18 a.m. ET against Friday’s closes, price change and not total return. Trade and quote data from Yahoo Finance; the diplomatic reporting is Al Jazeera’s, linked in the article.
