UK Energy Market Report - 10 September 2026

Every NBP contract settles higher, day-ahead power adds 5.9%, and Brent closes above 100 dollars for the first time since July

Wednesday 9 September lifted every UK gas contract on the board. NBP day-ahead settled at 197.65 p/therm, up 8.40p or 4.44%, and all eleven contracts rose with it, which the 2028 pair had declined to do the session before.

Power followed but travelled less far. Day-ahead baseload settled at £163.50/MWh, up £9.05 or 5.86%, and day-ahead peak at £155.77/MWh, up £2.93 or 1.92%.

Brent closed above $100 a barrel for the first time since July, at $101.21. European gas is at its highest in almost four years, and the session was driven by a drone-related fire at a Russian fuel and energy complex on top of the shipping war in the Gulf.

Gas Market

At 197.65 p/therm, Wednesday’s day-ahead is the highest settlement this report has carried, taking the record set the session before.

The near curve moved as a block and, unusually, slightly further than the prompt. Oct-26 settled at 197.67p, up 8.87p and the largest move on the board, Q4-26 at 199.80p up 8.72p, Winter-26 at 198.06p up 8.66p and Q1-27 at 196.28p up 8.60p, a band of 4.45% to 4.70%.

Further out the rises taper. Summer-27 added 4.29p to 130.97p and Winter-27 3.38p to 125.09p. Summer-28 and Winter-28 both gained about a penny after falling on Tuesday, so the 2028 divergence this report described yesterday lasted exactly one session.

Yesterday’s indications came in low across the board. This report published 09:32 marks of 196.07p day-ahead, 196.93p on Winter-26 and 198.77p on Q4-26; those settled at 197.65p, 198.06p and 199.80p, so the index was 1.03p to 1.58p under on all three. The far-curve warning was worth making too. A 97.99p morning mark on Winter-28 was dismissed here as a thin quote and it settled at 86.78p, 11.21p lower, on a contract that moved 0.96p.

This morning the board is marked higher again. At 09:42 day-ahead was offered at 200.40p, Winter-26 at 200.80p and Q4-26 at 202.20p, each 2.4p to 2.75p above Wednesday’s close. Summer-27 is the outlier at 138.00p, a 7.03p jump on a 130.97p settlement and more than double the next largest mark. Read that one as a thin quote.

The physical picture loosened while prices rose. On a like-for-like 07:00 comparison against the figures published here yesterday, demand is 0.70 mcm/day lower at 104.53, linepack 5.72 mcm higher at 340.32 and UKCS production 0.30 higher at 81.90. LNG sendout is unchanged at 8.10. The system opened 9 mcm/day long.

Norwegian supply is the number that turned. Langeled is down 5.00 mcm/day to 17.00 and Vesterled and Flags have gone to zero from 4.00, a 9.00 mcm/day fall on the same basis. Gassco exit nominations read 293.4 mcm/day against 296.3 on Wednesday, ending four consecutive days of gains, and maintenance at Karsto starts today and runs to 25 September.

Britain is the cheapest of the seven European hubs and its lead has opened up. NBP settled at 197.65p against Spain’s PVB at 200.06p, TTF at 201.26p and Italy’s PSV dearest at 210.33p. The discount to TTF widened to 3.61p from 2.84p on Tuesday and 2.37p on Monday, and the gap to Spain has gone from 0.01p to 2.41p in a session. A widening discount on a rising market is worth watching if the gas price your business pays is being set this autumn.

Electricity Market

Day-ahead baseload has risen for three consecutive sessions, and the rate of rise is falling away. The four moves read minus 23%, plus 75%, plus 21% and now plus 5.86%, taking it from £72.76/MWh last Friday to £163.50/MWh.

The peak-to-baseload inversion reopened, and this report called it wrong yesterday. Peak settled £7.73 below baseload against £1.61 the session before, so a gap described here as closing widened by £6.12 overnight. The run since 1 September now reads £2.29, £23.34, £28.88, £27.92, £17.91, £1.61 and £7.73. It is a prompt phenomenon only: forward peak sits well above forward baseload, Oct-26 at £174.24 against £152.00, and all eleven peak contracts settled higher.

The baseload forward curve rose for a third session. Q1-27 took the largest move again at £6.41 to £159.00, with Winter-26 up £5.70 to £158.61, Q4-26 £5.01 to £158.24 and Oct-26 £4.76 to £152.00. October is still the cheapest month on the board and now sits £11.50 below the day-ahead. The only fallers anywhere in power were Summer-28 and Winter-28, moves of pennies on contracts nobody is trading.

Yesterday’s power indications were high, on the same morning the gas index was low. This report published 09:32 marks of £164.75 day-ahead, £160.89 on Q4-26 and £160.56 on Winter-26; those settled at £163.50, £158.24 and £158.61, so the index was £1.22 to £2.65 over on every contract. One index, one timestamp, two fuels, opposite directions.

This morning baseload is offered at £176.50 day-ahead, £13.00 above settlement and the largest gap on the board. Q4-26, Winter-26 and Q1-27 are all marked at exactly £161.00, three contracts on one round number, which is what a thin index looks like. How a business electricity contract is priced against days like this depends far more on the settled curve than on any morning mark.

The imbalance market missed at the other end this time. Wednesday settled at a maximum system buy price of £267.00 at 19:18 and a minimum system sell price of £67.36 at 05:44, against a part-day row published here of £204.90 and £67.36. The floor landed exactly, having printed before the edition was stamped; the ceiling was £62.10 out, because the day’s peak came at 19:18. On Tuesday it was the other way round. Neither end of a part-day row is safe.

Today’s part-day row reads £209.90 at 07:48 and £125.10 at 03:18. The floors have climbed hard: minus £30.00 on Sunday, plus £34.11 on Monday, minus £11.96 on Tuesday, plus £67.36 on Wednesday and plus £125.10 so far today. Negative midday pricing has gone out of this market.

Nuclear availability is unchanged, with five units carrying outages for a combined 2,345 MW of impact, and a planned 620 MW outage at Hartlepool 2 starts on 14 September.

Wind is the reason gas-for-power demand rises today. Combined wind and solar is forecast near 8,900 MWh today against a seasonal norm of about 10,000, then above that norm from tomorrow through the 16th, peaking near 12,550, before falling back to about 9,700 on the 17th. Today is the trough, not the trend.

The weather is still not making the bull case in Britain. The UK temperature chart runs at or above the seasonal mean every day to 17 September, reaching 17.3°C on the 13th and 14th, while northwest European temperatures are running around 3°C below norms. One is continental and one is Britain, and nothing in the UK chart is buying gas for heating.

Oil, Carbon and Global Commodities

Oil is still setting the pace. Brent settled at $101.21/barrel, up $3.29 or 3.36%, its first close above $100 since July. Iran and the United States launched their largest attacks on shipping since the conflict began six months ago, and prices eased this morning while holding above $100.

Asian LNG is the print that matters most to a UK buyer. JKM front month added $1.14 or 4.25% to $27.96/MMBtu, the highest since December 2022. Its premium over NBP spot at $26.77 is $1.19/MMBtu, effectively unchanged from $1.20 on Tuesday.

Henry Hub spot fell about 3% to $2.81/MMBtu. The entire gas move is European and Asian, and none of it is American.

Carbon lagged the fuels. EUA Dec-26 rose €0.15 to €85.57 and UK ETS Dec-26 £0.69 to £61.61. At Wednesday’s rate of 1.1642 the UK contract is worth about €71.73, a discount of roughly €13.84 to the EUA, narrowed from €14.37 on Tuesday.

Sterling slipped 0.0021 to 1.1642 against the euro and was flat at 1.3542 against the dollar, so a little of the continental gas move lands on the exchange rate as well.

Storage and Supply Outlook

European storage stood at 67.1% full on 7 September, up from the 66.9% carried in yesterday’s edition and still around 12 percentage points below the same point last year.

The country map has not moved for a third session. Italy is fullest at 83%, France and Spain both hold 73%, Germany 54% and Britain 49%. The two Benelux figures are 49% and 57%, and their labels overlap on the source map, so we are not going to guess which of the Netherlands and Belgium holds which.

Britain has now been at 49% for most of a fortnight. Rough is at zero and so is Humbly Grove. The working stock sits in Stublach at 76%, HolFord at 75%, Holehouse Farm at 70%, Hornsea at 58% and Aldbrough at 53%. On the LNG side South Hook is 62% full, Dragon 33% and Isle of Grain 31%.

The cargo schedule is the change worth noting. Ten cargoes are booked into northwest European terminals between today and 16 September, about 917 mcm, seven of them from the United States. Not one is booked into a UK terminal. Yesterday’s schedule carried a 100 mcm cargo into Milford Haven on 15 September, and today’s list, which runs a day further out, no longer shows it.

Britain is still exporting all the same, at 11.08 mcm/day out through BBL, with the Belgian interconnector idle for a fifth session. A market 49% full, with its largest seasonal site empty and no LNG booked in for a week, is still sending gas to the continent in September.

What This Means for Your Business

The numbers to plan around are Winter-26 at 198.06 p/therm and £158.61/MWh. Both have now risen on four consecutive sessions and both are at the top of their range for this run. A 2026/27 winter renewal has got worse every day this week.

The shape of the curve is the actionable part, and the gap is still widening. Winter-27 settled at 125.09 p/therm and £105.47/MWh, which is 72.97p cheaper on gas and £53.14 cheaper on power than the winter immediately in front of it. Those gaps were 67.69p and £49.80 the session before. The market is charging more and more for the winter you cannot avoid and comparatively little for the one after it, which is the case for looking past a straight twelve-month renewal on any contract ending next autumn.

A spread that travels £16 in two sessions, as the peak-to-baseload discount just has, is not a signal to act on in either direction. Splitting volume across dates, which is what a staged buying approach exists to do, is the answer to a market being repriced by a shooting war rather than by weather.

If you want to know what these movements mean for your own contract dates and consumption profile, speak to one of our energy consultants today.

Previous report: UK Energy Market Report – 9 September 2026