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Further help could be on the way for the sector, too, according to Ninepoint Partners portfolio manager Eric Nuttall, who expects OPEC will announce their own shut-in of at least one million barrels per day at a summit on Thursday.

“I think this is the beginning of (investors) returning to the sector, provided a positive outcome at the OPEC meeting,” Nuttall said. “If there is a cut of at least one million barrels per day … then I think you’ll see WTI rally to over US$60 and you could have a 50 per cent rally in many of these (stocks) simply because they’ve fallen so dramatically.”

While the rally was the first of note for the sector in months, Nuttall wasn’t ecstatic. Sure, a 10 per cent increase in share prices is great for investors, but not when those very same stocks had already fallen by 50 per cent earlier this year, he said.

Since the beginning of July, when most of the firms hit their 52-week highs, Cenovus’s stock has plunged by more than 20 per cent. Crescent Point, meanwhile, has seen losses of more than 55 per cent in that same time frame. As oil prices began to decline, Nuttall said, investors began “hate selling” the stocks when they could no longer stand to see the red on their screens every day.

The rally seems to have only affected upstream producers. Downstream producers such as Husky Energy Inc. and Suncor Energy Inc., who are often insulated from fluctuations in Canadian oil prices, did not benefit like their upstream competitors from Notley’s intervention and only gained 2.5 and 0.5 per cent respectively.