UK Energy Market Report - 7 August 2026

NBP took back Tuesday’s sell-off and went past it, settling 7p to 9p higher across the near curve on 6 August, while UK day-ahead power is offered at 145 £/MWh this morning on falling wind and a nuclear outage.

Yesterday’s report said the sell-off was already being unwound. It was, and then some. Every NBP contract on the board settled higher on 6 August, most of the near curve by 8p a therm, and the market has kept buying through this morning.

Day-Ahead closed at 137.00 p/therm. That is not a partial retrace of Tuesday’s fall, it is a new high for the week, above where the market sat before the sell-off started.

The reason is that every assumption behind Tuesday’s drop reversed inside 48 hours. Wind fell, Norwegian supply tightened, and the Iran-Oman optimism that took the risk premium out of the curve is being priced back in.

Gas Market

NBP Day-Ahead settled at 137.00 p/therm on 6 August, up 7.50p. The front month gained more, Sep-26 adding 8.87p to 136.91p.

The near curve moved together and moved hard. Q4-26 rose 8.28p to 139.67p, Nov-26 gained 8.32p to 140.53p and Win-26 added 7.77p to 136.73p.

Supply did most of it. Norwegian flows were nominated at 316.3 mcm/day on 6 August, with Gassco flagging a further 6 mcm/day curtailment at Åsgard. Deliveries to Britain fell around 3% to 58.5 mcm/day.

Wind did the rest. German and UK output was forecast to drop roughly 25% into today, to 8.2 GW and 6.2 GW respectively.

Traders also point to technical short covering after Tuesday’s slide, with Middle East shipping risk putting a floor back under Winter-26 and Summer-27.

This morning the buying has continued rather than faded. By 09:25, Day-Ahead was indicated at 138.10p, Sep-26 at 137.89p and Q4-26 at 142.84p, up another 3.17p. Liquidity is thin, so size the move with care, but nothing on the board is offered lower.

The long end is again where the largest bid sits. Sum-28 is indicated 3.59p higher at 71.00p and Sum-27 up 2.41p at 93.00p, both outpacing the prompt in percentage terms.

On the system, Britain opened 6 mcm/day long. Demand has fallen 12.06 mcm/day to 124.52, UKCS production has climbed 6.70 to 74.10 and linepack is comfortable at 338.03 mcm, up 6.40 on the day.

Norwegian supply is the thread that keeps tightening. GASSCO now reports exit nominations of 312.2 mcm/day. The unplanned Åsgard outage is taking out 6 mcm/day and the Kårstø restart, half expected today, has slipped to tomorrow. Flows to Britain are down 5 mcm/day, with both Langeled at 42.20 and Vesterled at 11.00 cutting nominations.

UK LNG sendout is unchanged at 8.20 mcm/day. Britain continues to export into the continental premium, 34.70 mcm/day to Belgium through IUK and 15.89 to the Netherlands through BBL, with NBP at 137.00p against TTF at 140.97p, THE at 141.83p and Italian PSV at 150.08p.

The card below summarises where NBP contracts settled against the previous session.

Electricity Market

UK Day-Ahead baseload settled at 113.34 £/MWh on 6 August, up 2.06 on the day. A modest move, and completely unrepresentative of where the market has gone since.

The forward curve was the stronger signal. Oct-26 baseload gained 5.84 £/MWh to 111.91, Nov-26 added 5.77 to 122.99, Q4-26 rose 5.49 to 118.43 and Win-26 climbed 4.21 to 116.59.

Day-Ahead peak went the other way, settling at 95.24 £/MWh, down 4.86. That leaves peak 18.10 £/MWh below baseload, a wider inversion than yesterday’s 11.18, and the clearest possible signature of midday solar hollowing out the daytime block.

This morning that picture has broken. Day-Ahead baseload is offered at 145 £/MWh, some 31.66 higher, on thin volume.

Two things explain it. Wind is forecast to fall further below seasonal norms from tomorrow, pushing day-ahead gas-for-power demand up 11 mcm/day, and Hartlepool 2 came off today for a planned 16-day outage that removes 620 MW.

The balancing market already shows the change. Minimum System Sell Price on 7 August was 86.00 £/MWh, against 16.00 the day before and minus 48.00 on Wednesday. The midday collapse has simply stopped happening.

Forward power is firmer across the board this morning, Sep-26 offered at 117.50 £/MWh and Q4-26 at 122.00. The EC46 run points to temperatures rising towards another period of extreme heat next week, which supports cooling load into a tighter supply stack.

Oil, Carbon and Global Commodities

Brent M+1 settled at 82.49 $/barrel, up 3.04 on the day. That is a 3.8% move, and it is the same story that lifted gas.

Two days ago the market was pricing an Iran-Oman agreement as a route to reopening the Strait of Hormuz. It is now reading the conditions attached to that agreement as considerably stricter than assumed.

The traffic data supports the caution. Vessel movements through the Strait ran at 33 between Monday and Thursday this week, against 50 over the same period last week.

Carbon followed energy up. EUA Dec-26 gained 0.80 to €81.89 and UK ETS Dec-26 rose 0.62 to £59.48, the UK scheme still trading at a wide discount to the European one.

Coal API2 for Cal-27 edged 0.67 higher to $118.11/tonne. JKM added 1.02 to $19.77/MMBtu and TTF spot rose 1.23 to $18.99. Henry Hub was the lone faller, easing 0.07 to $2.53. Sterling was flat at 1.1668 against the euro and 1.3453 against the dollar.

Commodity	Price	Change (day)
Brent Crude (M+1)	$82.49/barrel	+3.8%
Coal API2 (Cal-27)	$118.11/tonne	+0.6%
EUA Carbon (Dec-26)	€81.89/tonne	+1.0%
UK ETS (Dec-26)	£59.48/tonne	+1.1%
JKM LNG (front-month)	$19.77/MMBtu	+5.4%
TTF Gas (spot)	$18.99/MMBtu	+6.9%

Storage and Supply Outlook

European inventories stood at close to 58% full on 4 August. The headline number is not the problem.

The comparison is. That is just over 12 percentage points below the same point last year, and current injection rates are running well below what is needed to reach the bloc’s flexible 90% target in the 1 October to 1 December window.

Put plainly, Europe is behind on refill and is not currently catching up. That is a structural bid under the winter contracts that no single warm week will remove.

The LNG schedule into North West Europe stays dense and stays American. Gate takes 87 mcm today and Wilhelmshaven 104 mcm from Louisiana, with Dunkirk and Gate due 104 and 102 mcm on 9 August, and Eemshaven and Gate a further 190 mcm on 10 August.

Not one of those cargoes is scheduled for a British terminal. UK sendout stays pinned at 8.20 mcm/day while the continent restocks, which is precisely why Britain is exporting 50 mcm/day through IUK and BBL rather than filling its own tanks.

What This Means for Your Business

Tuesday’s 8p fall is gone. If you spent Wednesday deciding whether to act on it, the decision has been made for you.

That is worth sitting with, because it happens more often than most buyers expect. A single session’s move in this market is almost never a level you can transact at two days later, and treating a screen print as a buying window is how renewals get mistimed.

The curve shape is the durable information. Win-26 settled at 136.73p against Sum-27 at 90.59p, a step down of 46.14p per therm once this winter clears.

Yesterday that gap was 42.21p. It has widened by nearly 4p in one session, undoing most of the narrowing we flagged as significant on Wednesday. The winter premium is not eroding, it is being defended.

For a renewal landing this autumn, that premium is the single largest line in the quote. It is worth being clear on how a start date either side of October changes what you actually pay, because an April start prices off a curve that is 46p a therm cheaper.

On the power side the message is different and more immediate. Day-Ahead offered at 145 £/MWh this morning, with wind falling and 620 MW of nuclear off for a fortnight, is a reminder that the summer solar cushion is a daytime phenomenon and nothing more.

Businesses with load outside the middle of the day carry that cost directly, and it is why understanding how your consumption profile maps onto half-hourly pricing matters more than the headline unit rate on a comparison sheet.

The watch items are the Kårstø restart now due tomorrow, the Åsgard curtailment, Hormuz traffic, and European storage, which remains the weakest number in the whole picture.

For a view tailored to your consumption profile and renewal window, speak to one of our energy consultants today.

Previous report: UK Energy Market Report – 6 August 2026