UK Energy Market Report - 13 August 2026

Gas took out Monday’s high right across the near curve on Wednesday, with Q4-26 up 5.77p to 153.44p, while day-ahead power jumped 11.9% to 149.15 £/MWh on a heat peak, an eclipse and a NESO margin notice.

Tuesday looked like the top. It was a pause.

Wednesday put the entire near gas curve back above Monday’s high, with NBP Day-Ahead settling 3.50p firmer at 148.50 p/therm and every forward contract up between 2.1% and 4.1%. UK day-ahead baseload power settled 15.91 higher at 149.15 £/MWh, one of the highest prints of the year.

This morning the heat is breaking and the day-ahead is indicated 39 lower. The curve is not following it down.

Gas Market

NBP Day-Ahead settled at 148.50p on 12 August, up 3.50p or 2.4%. The forward curve rose considerably harder.

Sep-26 gained 5.69p to 149.91p, Oct-26 6.00p to 150.81p and Nov-26 5.63p to 153.99p. Q4-26 added 5.77p to 153.44p and Q1-27 5.20p to 147.38p, while Winter-26 settled 5.49p higher at 150.44p.

The far curve joined in for once. Summer-27 rose 3.52p to 94.77p, Winter-27 2.88p to 93.68p, Summer-28 1.90p to 69.38p and Winter-28 1.59p to 76.38p.

Set that against Monday and Tuesday’s correction disappears. Q4-26 settled 152.49p on Monday and stands at 153.44p, Sep-26 149.72p and now 149.91p, Winter-26 149.21p and now 150.44p.

Every near contract has closed above the peak of Monday’s rally.

What is striking is that supply improved and prices rose anyway. Compressor testing at Troll lifted Norwegian output, with Gassco recording 326.2 mcm/day of flow, and the curve still added 4%.

Demand was the stronger force. Persistent heat across Northwest Europe pushed cooling load higher and tightened system balances, with Middle East tension and the risk to LNG through the Strait of Hormuz supporting the back end.

Britain remains the cheapest hub in Europe, but by less. NBP settled at 148.50p against TTF 151.14p, PVB 151.60p, PEG 152.25p, THE 152.79p, PSV 154.40p and Austrian VTP 154.84p. The discount to TTF has narrowed to 2.64p from 3.06p on Tuesday.

The export pull eased with it. Flows to the Netherlands through BBL fell 2.81 to 8.62 mcm/day, while IUK held at 34.70 to Belgium, so Britain is still sending 43.32 mcm/day out against 8.10 of LNG sendout coming in. Businesses tracking where the NBP forward curve has moved since last week should be looking at Q4 and Winter, not the prompt.

This morning the tone has softened. At the 09:18 stamp Day-Ahead is indicated 145.99p, down 2.51, with Sep-26 at 145.85p, Q4-26 at 149.31p and Winter-26 at 146.66p, each around 4p lower.

Supply is easing too. Norwegian imports are nominated 3 mcm/day lower at 60 mcm/day after Vesterled returned to zero, with Langeled at 49 and FLAGS at 11, and total Gassco nominations at 318.9 mcm/day. UKCS receipts slipped 2.20 to 83.90 mcm/day, demand rose 1.65 to 142.31 and linepack gained 2.96 to 334.13 mcm.

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

Electricity Market

UK day-ahead baseload settled at 149.15 £/MWh on 12 August, up 15.91 or 11.9%. That is a third consecutive rise and puts it 63.8% above Friday’s 91.07.

Day-ahead peak finally caught up, settling 18.39 higher at 137.71 £/MWh, a gain of 15.4%.

So the inversion this report has been tracking narrowed for the first time in a week. Baseload now sits 11.44 £/MWh above the peak block, against 13.92 on Tuesday.

Three things hit the same session. Forecasts pointed to 36 to 37°C, wind output fell sharply, and the solar eclipse briefly removed a slice of midday generation. NESO issued an Electricity Margins Call for the evening peak, then cancelled it before midday.

France compounded it, with nine reactors constrained by high river temperatures, low water levels or jellyfish, which thins the import cushion the interconnectors normally provide.

Forward power rose across every single contract, which is the part that matters. Sep-26 baseload added 2.68 to 122.68 £/MWh, Oct-26 2.96 to 120.62, Nov-26 2.84 to 131.24, Q4-26 3.02 to 127.10 and Winter-26 3.01 to 125.33.

The far end went with it rather than against it. Summer-27 gained 2.17 to 82.91, Winter-27 1.10 to 84.96, Summer-28 1.21 to 65.20 and Winter-28 0.74 to 72.44.

That is a different animal from Tuesday, when the near curve was flat and the far curve fell. This was a parallel shift upwards, and it still steepened the seasonal spread: Winter-26 now stands 42.42 £/MWh above Summer-27, up from 41.58.

The balancing market confirms where the strain sat. The daily maximum System Buy Price has run 172.37 £/MWh on 9 August, 227.00 on 10 August, 202.61 on 11 August and 265.89 on 12 August at 18:19, the highest of the run, with the day’s minimum System Sell Price at 58.00.

Yesterday’s morning indications are worth marking. This report published 148.50p for Wednesday’s gas day-ahead and it settled at exactly 148.50p, and offered power day-ahead at 150.00 £/MWh against a 149.15 settlement. The forwards were the weak point: power Q4-26 was indicated at 131.50 and settled 127.10, out by 4.40. The prompt index is holding up well, the forward index is not.

This morning that index reads oddly, and it is worth separating the two halves. Baseload day-ahead is indicated at 110.00 £/MWh, down 39.15, while peak is up 8.96 at 146.67. TotalEnergies describes UK base as relatively flat with limited liquidity, which is true of the curve, where Sep-26 is 0.23 lower and Nov-26 1.31 higher, but plainly not of the day-ahead.

The day-ahead collapse is the weather turning. Temperatures peak today at around 25°C average before easing, and gas for power consumption is forecast to fall 11 mcm/day to 36 mcm/day, then hold at 26 across the weekend and the following working day.

Nuclear availability improves in the near term, which helps, but not for long. Hartlepool 2 has been off since 7 August on a 16-day outage, Heysham 1 reactor 1 comes fully off on 17 August for 15 days, Torness 1 on 21 August for 17 days and Heysham 2 reactor 8 on 4 September for 80 days.

Oil, Carbon and Global Commodities

Brent M+1 settled at 88.98 $/barrel on Wednesday, up just 0.07 after Tuesday’s 1.4% rise. Stalled United States and Iran talks continue to keep a floor under the price without adding to it.

Coal API2 for Cal-27 added 1.01 to $125.75/tonne, a move of 0.8%.

Carbon went the other way to everything else. EUA Dec-26 fell 0.45 to €81.99 and UK ETS Dec-26 lost 0.73 to £58.40, a drop of 1.2% on a day when gas rose 4%.

At Wednesday’s 1.1715 sterling rate the European allowance is worth about £69.99, putting the UK scheme roughly £11.59 a tonne below its European equivalent, against £11.34 on Tuesday. The discount had been static for two sessions and has now widened.

The LNG complex followed gas up. JKM front month rose 0.61 to $21.26/MMBtu, TTF spot 0.45 to $20.44 and NBP spot 0.45 to $20.04, with Henry Hub 0.03 firmer at $2.82.

JKM now carries a 0.82 $/MMBtu premium over TTF, up from 0.67 on Tuesday. Asia is bidding harder for the same cargoes, which is the mechanism that keeps European sendout thin.

Sterling firmed slightly against the euro at 1.1715 and eased against the dollar at 1.3492.

Commodity	Price	Change (day)
Brent Crude (M+1)	$88.98/barrel	+0.1%
Coal API2 (Cal-27)	$125.75/tonne	+0.8%
EUA Carbon (Dec-26)	€81.99/tonne	-0.5%
UK ETS (Dec-26)	£58.40/tonne	-1.2%
JKM LNG (front-month)	$21.26/MMBtu	+2.9%
TTF Gas (spot)	$20.44/MMBtu	+2.3%

Storage and Supply Outlook

European storage injections fell for a second consecutive session, which is the detail underneath the curve move.

The spread across the continent has not improved. Italy sits at 77% and Spain at 72%, but France is at 59%, Germany 47%, Britain 41%, and the Netherlands and Belgium 39% each. TotalEnergies puts German stocks at 48.6% and below the five year average.

Germany below half full in the second week of August, with injections slowing rather than accelerating, is the line to carry into any winter pricing discussion.

British storage drew down. South Hook is 73% full, Holehouse Farm 70%, Stublach 69%, Holford 61%, Hill Top 44%, Hornsea 42%, Aldbrough 41%, Isle of Grain 38% and Dragon 33%. Rough and Humbly Grove remain at zero. Aldbrough alone gave up 8 percentage points in a day.

The arrivals schedule into North West Europe carries ten cargoes and 914 mcm to 19 August, five of them American, one Norwegian and one Algerian. Two are Russian, into Dunkirk and Gate on the same day, 15 August.

Not one is booked into a British terminal, which is why sendout sits at 8.10 mcm/day while Britain exports 43.32.

What This Means for Your Business

Three sessions have repriced the near gas curve by roughly 10%.

Q4-26 closed Friday at 139.23p and settled Wednesday at 153.44p, a move of 14.21p a therm. Sep-26 has added 13.96p over the same three sessions and Winter-26 13.75p.

Anyone who quoted an autumn or winter start last week and has not gone back to the client is not slightly out of date, they are 14p a therm out of date.

Tuesday was the only pullback and it lasted one session. That is the practical lesson from this week: the chance to buy a dip in a rising market is measured in hours, not days.

The shape is the other signal. Winter-26 stands 55.67p a therm above Summer-27, against 53.81p on Monday and 53.71p on Tuesday. The curve did not just move up, it steepened, so the market is paying specifically for winter risk rather than repricing gas in general.

Power did the same in its own units, lifting as a block while its Winter-26 premium over Summer-27 widened to 42.42 £/MWh. That combination is the textbook argument for taking a winter position in stages rather than betting on a single screen price, because the risk being priced is concentrated in a few months rather than spread across the term.

On day-ahead power, do not draw the wrong conclusion. The 149.15 print was a heatwave, an eclipse and a wind trough landing together, and the same index has the next delivery day at 110.00. A business on a fixed contract felt none of it, a business exposed to the day-ahead felt all of it in one afternoon.

The watch list into next week is specific. Temperatures ease from today, Vesterled is back at zero, European injections have fallen two sessions running, Heysham 1 comes fully off on 17 August and Torness 1 on 21 August, and Hormuz stays unresolved.

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 – 12 August 2026