US$150 crude calls, depleted inventories, and a soft labour market push energy equities into the spotlight
Oil could climb as high as US$150 a barrel in the coming weeks, forcing demand rationing “by more than during COVID” and driving global inventories to “all time lows in history,” according to BNN Bloomberg’s interview with Eric Nuttall of Ninepoint Partners.
Nuttall, partner and senior portfolio manager at Ninepoint Partners, tells the outlet this is not a months‑ or quarters‑long issue, and warns that in the next few weeks demand will need to be curbed more than during COVID.
He calls this “by far the biggest energy crisis that anybody alive is experiencing,” arguing that work‑from‑home mandates, similar to those in South Korea and Singapore, are one way to cut consumption.
As per BNN Bloomberg, the core of the shock is the Strait of Hormuz, which normally handles roughly 20 percent of global oil supply.
Nuttall says the strait has been “effectively shut since the start of the war on February 28,” removing an estimated 650m barrels of supply so far.
He adds that even if the waterway reopened tomorrow, the market would still be short about 1.5m barrels a day because several weeks of shipments have already been delivered and consumed, with no new barrels from the Persian Gulf to replace them.
Nuttall tells BNN Bloomberg that losing 14 million barrels a day is already forcing inventory drawdowns, with diesel stocks down 4 percent in a week and gasoline off 3 percent.
He says global inventories could fall to “record lows” by the end of May, even if the strait reopens now.
Price action already reflects the strain.
CBC News reports that Brent crude briefly surged past US$126 a barrel — the highest since March 2022 — before easing to about US$111 for June delivery, up from around US$70 before the war.
CNBC says US crude has swung sharply, falling more than 3 percent to US$101.38 per barrel in one session, while Brent dropped about 2 percent to US$108 as traders react to shifting headlines on the conflict.
Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods told investors that “the market has not absorbed the full impact of the unprecedented oil supply disruption” caused by the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
According to CNBC, he said the market has yet to feel the full effect and warned “there’s more to come if the strait remains closed.”
The same article reports that Exxon expects its Middle East production to fall 750,000 barrels per day versus 2025 if the strait stays closed through the second quarter, with throughput to refiners down 3 percent versus the fourth quarter of 2025.
About 15 percent of Exxon’s total production has been affected, and a filing cited by CNBC says Iranian attacks damaged two LNG production lines at Qatar’s export hub that made up about 3 percent of Exxon’s 2025 upstream output.
Woods says flows from the Persian Gulf could normalize “in a month or two” after reopening, but governments and industry will then need to refill strategic reserves and commercial inventories, adding “more demand to the market” and “upward pressure on prices.”
At the consumer level, the Toronto Star reports that Canada’s national average gasoline price hit $1.824 per litre in April, while CBC News says it reached $1.830 per litre on a recent Thursday, up 47.9 cents from a year earlier, with prices above $2 in BC.
The Star notes that in March, CPI rose 2.4 percent year‑over‑year, gasoline prices jumped 21.2 percent month‑over‑month — the largest increase on record according to Statistics Canada — and grocery inflation hit 4.4 percent, with fresh vegetables up 7.8 percent.
The Bank of Canada sees domestic inflation peaking around 3 percent in April and staying near that level for most of 2027 if the conflict persists.
It held its key rate at 2.25 percent, and governor Tiff Macklem warned that if higher energy prices fuel persistent, broad‑based inflation, the bank may need “consecutive increases in the policy rate.”
Desjardins’ Jimmy Jean tells the Star he expects GDP growth of 1.4 percent on average in 2026 and warns that layering rate hikes on top of payment shocks for about 1.3m renewing mortgages risks “engineering a recession.”
On the corporate side, Reuters reports that Procter & Gamble has flagged a roughly US$1bn hit to its fiscal 2027 profit as higher crude prices lift packaging, plastic materials and logistics costs, and that at least 35 companies have signalled new price increases since the war began.
The Associated Press says US gasoline has climbed to an average of US$4.30 a gallon from US$2.98 — a 44 percent increase — while diesel has risen to nearly US$5.50 from US$3.76, driving surcharges from the US Postal Service and Amazon and feeding through to consumer goods and airfares.
For Canadian energy equities, Nuttall tells BNN Bloomberg his fund went to a 100 percent oil‑weighted portfolio in January after rejecting the idea of a supply glut.
He says his fund owns seven Canadian names and four US ones, including Suncor Energy Inc. and Cenovus Energy Inc., which he says use US$80 oil as a planning benchmark, trade at about six times cash flow and offer 12 percent forward free cash flow yields.
He also cites Strathcona Resources Ltd., which he says is set to grow production 45 percent over four years while paying roughly 9 percent in annual special dividends, and Athabasca Oil Corp., which he notes has risen from $0.18 to $12 and which he “ultimately” sees as a $20 stock.
Nuttall argues that countries such as India can no longer depend solely on the Strait and that demand for Canadian energy is increasing as security of supply becomes a key issue.
