August was the mirror image of July.

Where July climbed in a straight line and reversed once at the very end, August sold off first and then rose for three weeks before easing on the final day. NBP day-ahead opened the month at 141.00p per therm, fell to 129.50p by the 5th, peaked at 166.50p on the 27th and settled August at 162.10p.

That is 15% on the month and 25% above the low. Oil and carbon finished the same weeks flat, so this was a European gas move rather than an energy market move, and the reason for it is storage.

The first week was the sell-off. Talk of the Strait of Hormuz reopening pulled the risk premium back out of gas and oil together, a surge of LNG arrivals met strong wind and solar, and the whole near curve went with it. Day-ahead lost 5.75p on the 4th and 5.75p again on the 5th to reach 129.50p, the low of the month.

It did not last the week. Day-ahead added 7.50p on the 6th, and after a quiet Friday the market gapped 10.40p higher on Monday the 10th as a heatwave arrived into below-normal wind and supply security concerns overrode healthy renewable output.

From there the pattern set in and rarely broke. An unplanned outage at Norway’s Kollsnes plant lifted the prompt on the 13th, the near curve took out its highs on the 14th, day-ahead settled at 157.25p on the 18th, and on the 19th Summer-27 traded through 100p a therm for the first time.

The last full week was the strongest of it. Day-ahead settled at 161.25p on the 20th, with Britain going into the move holding the emptiest storage in Europe and still exporting 46.54 mcm per day to the continent, then 164.00p on the 21st and 166.15p on the 24th.

Two softer sessions took the prompt to 160.50p by the 26th, a compressor fault at Asgard lifted all eleven NBP contracts to 166.50p on the 27th, and a forecast of stronger wind and cooler weather took 4.40p back out on the 28th.

What did not happen is as telling as what did. Brent finished at 88.10 dollars against 90.12 at the end of July, having traded as low as 79.36 and as high as 94.39 in between, a complete round trip and slightly down on the month.

EUA carbon moved from €81.26 to €82.73 and the UK allowance from £59.09 to £59.39. Gas rose 15% while the two commodities that normally travel with it went nowhere.

Where the increase landed changed during the month. July repriced winter and left the rest of the curve alone. August moved all of it.

Winter-26 rose from 143.31p at the end of July to 165.34p, up 15%, while Summer-27 went from 93.39p to 109.06p, up 17%, and through 100p a therm for the first time.

The winter premium still widened, from 49.92p to 56.28p, so the front of the heating season keeps its priority, but the far end of the curve has stopped being ignored.

Storage is the reason. EU inventories improved from 57.11% at the start of the month to about 64%, and remain roughly twelve percentage points behind the same point last year.

Britain has no seasonal cushion behind that. Rough and Humbly Grove were recorded at zero on every day of the month, and Hornsea only climbed from 34% to 56%.

Power rose further than gas and was noisier about it. Day-ahead baseload, £108.19 per MWh at the end of July, bottomed at £88.84 on the 4th, reached £149.15 on the 12th on a heat peak, a solar eclipse and a NESO margin notice, and closed the month at £130.50, up 21%.

Front-month baseload held near three-year highs and Winter-26 finished at £135.08. The generation mix is the reason. August wind averaged about 6.5 GW, the lowest monthly average of 2026 so far, and gas-fired plant filled the gap at roughly 6.9 GW.