UK Energy Market Report - 17 August 2026

Every NBP contract on the board settled higher on Friday and the near curve took out Wednesday’s highs, while UK day-ahead power fell 14.6% and every single power forward rose against it.

Friday split the two fuels harder than any session in this run, and in opposite directions.

The gas curve went up everywhere. Every NBP contract from Day-Ahead to Winter-28 settled higher, and the near contracts closed above their Wednesday highs, which settles the question Thursday left open.

Power did the reverse. Day-ahead baseload fell 21.20 to 124.30 £/MWh, a drop of 14.6%, while every single power forward rose.

Gas Market

NBP Day-Ahead settled at 150.75p on 14 August, up 1.15p or 0.8%, and the first close of this run above the 150p handle.

The forward curve is the bigger story. Sep-26 gained 2.75p to 151.23p, Oct-26 2.59p to 151.87p and Nov-26 2.49p to 154.87p. Q4-26 added 2.42p to 154.35p, Q1-27 2.00p to 148.30p and Winter-26 2.21p to 151.36p.

Thursday was a pause, and Friday proved it. Q4-26 closed Wednesday at 153.45p, gave back 1.51p on Thursday, then settled Friday at 154.35p, a new high for the move. Sep-26 and Winter-26 did the same, closing above their Wednesday marks of 149.91p and 150.44p.

The far curve joined in for once. Summer-27 added 0.75p to 96.17p, Winter-27 0.92p to 94.71p, Summer-28 0.33p to 69.58p and Winter-28 0.62p to 77.14p.

The shape rebuilt with it. Winter-26 now stands 55.19p a therm above Summer-27, against 53.73p on Thursday and 55.67p on Wednesday, so the winter premium the market handed back has gone straight back on. Buyers judging how much of their winter exposure is still open are looking at a curve that has moved twice in five sessions and not once retraced properly.

Britain is still the cheapest hub in Europe, but by less each day. NBP settled 150.75p against TTF 152.23p, PVB 152.92p, THE 153.16p, PEG 153.59p, PSV 154.56p and Austrian VTP 155.11p.

The discount to TTF narrowed to 1.48p from 2.01p on Thursday and 2.64p on Wednesday. That is a third consecutive narrowing, and it is the clearest sign that the strength is being imported rather than made at home.

Norwegian supply has recovered. Kollsnes, the unplanned outage this report flagged on Thursday, no longer shows in the numbers, and total Norwegian exit nominations are reported at 322.9 mcm/day.

The British system opened 15 mcm/day long this morning. At the 07:00 stamp UKCS production was 90.30 mcm/day, Langeled 52.00 and Vesterled and Flags 12.00, with linepack down 14.27 to 314.93 mcm.

Read the demand line carefully. It shows 156.94 mcm/day against 126.80, but the comparison day is a Sunday, so that jump is the working week returning rather than a demand event.

LNG is still the weak leg. Sendout is nominated at 8 mcm/day, unchanged from Friday, against 44.80 mcm/day leaving the country through IUK and BBL.

The weather has turned from a bearish input into a bullish one. TotalEnergies reports the EC46 forecast trending cooler than previously expected and projected below seasonal normal over the coming weeks, having spent most of this month running above it.

At the 09:27 stamp the whole curve is bid again, roughly 2.3p to 2.6p across the board. Day-Ahead is indicated 153.01p, Sep-26 153.52p, Q4-26 156.77p and Winter-26 153.89p.

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

Electricity Market

UK day-ahead baseload settled at 124.30 £/MWh on 14 August, down 21.20 or 14.6%. That is the largest one-session fall of this run.

Day-ahead peak fell harder still, down 27.91 or 20.8% to 106.00 £/MWh.

So the inversion this report has been tracking widened sharply. Baseload now sits 18.30 £/MWh above the peak block, against 11.59 on Thursday, which is midday solar doing to the peak window what it has done all summer.

Worth pausing on that, because the inversion does not exist in the forward market. Winter-26 peak is priced at 144.20 £/MWh against 125.97 baseload, and Sep-26 peak at 131.98 against 123.50. Peak trades above base everywhere beyond the prompt, so this is a summer daylight artefact and should not be read across into a winter position.

The forwards went the other way from the prompt. Sep-26 baseload rose 1.02 to 123.50 £/MWh, Oct-26 1.47 to 121.50, Nov-26 1.43 to 131.86, Q4-26 1.43 to 127.94, Q1-27 0.97 to 123.96 and Winter-26 1.20 to 125.97.

The far curve rose too, Summer-27 by 0.68 to 83.46 and Winter-27 by 0.28 to 85.70. As in gas, not one contract fell.

The balancing market tells you what the day-ahead does not. The daily maximum System Buy Price reached 350.00 £/MWh at 06:18 this morning, the highest of the run.

More telling is the floor. The daily minimum System Sell Price has risen every single day for five days, from 70.40 on 13 August through 96.02, 99.60 and 102.00 to 139.48 today. The cheapest half hour of the day is now nearly twice what it was last Thursday.

The supply side explains the forwards. Heysham 1 reactor 1 comes fully off today for 15 days, Torness 1 follows on 21 August for 17 days, Hartlepool 2 has been off since 7 August, and Heysham 2 reactor 8 goes off on 4 September for 80 days.

France is tighter again, with heat related restrictions at a yearly high today at around 11.6 GW of curtailed capacity, although TotalEnergies expects availability to improve from tomorrow as the jellyfish related outages resolve.

Wind and solar output is forecast near 6,000 MWh today, rising above the 9,500 MWh seasonal norm to roughly 11,100 MWh on 18 and 19 August, then troughing near 8,400 MWh around 21 August.

Friday’s morning indication needs owning. This report carried 145.00 £/MWh as the indication for Friday’s baseload day-ahead and it settled 124.30, out by 20.70.

The direction of the error is what matters. On Thursday the index pointed sharply down at 110.00 and the market settled 145.50; on Friday it pointed roughly flat at 145.00 and the market settled 124.30. Two enormous misses on consecutive mornings, in opposite directions, which retires the idea that this index simply lags a rising market.

The gas index, on the same two mornings, was almost exact, indicating Day-Ahead at 150.97p against a 150.75p settlement and missing Sep-26, Q4-26 and Winter-26 by less than 0.9p each. The problem is specific to the power prompt, so this morning’s 139.00 indication is a direction and nothing more.

Oil, Carbon and Global Commodities

Brent M+1 settled at 88.52 $/barrel on Friday, up 1.45 or 1.7%, recovering most of Thursday’s fall.

TotalEnergies reports oil holding inside Friday’s range this morning, with Middle East uncertainty still unresolved either way.

Coal API2 for Cal-27 eased 0.48 to $124.95/tonne.

Carbon fell while gas rose, which is the opposite of Thursday. EUA Dec-26 lost 0.95 to €81.79 and UK ETS Dec-26 slipped 0.13 to £58.89.

At Friday’s 1.1703 sterling rate the European allowance is worth about £69.89, putting the UK scheme £11.00 a tonne below its European equivalent, against £11.72 on Thursday. Three consecutive sessions of widening have now reversed.

The LNG complex firmed across the board. JKM front month rose 0.33 to $21.41/MMBtu, TTF spot 0.15 to $20.61, NBP spot to $20.40 and Henry Hub 0.02 to $2.79.

JKM now carries a 0.80 $/MMBtu premium over TTF, up from 0.63 on Thursday. Asia bidding harder is the opposite of what would loosen European sendout, and it lines up with British terminals sitting at 8 mcm/day.

Sterling firmed against both currencies, at 1.1703 to the euro and 1.3530 to the dollar.

Commodity	Price	Change (day)
Brent Crude (M+1)	$88.52/barrel	+1.7%
Coal API2 (Cal-27)	$124.95/tonne	-0.4%
EUA Carbon (Dec-26)	€81.79/tonne	-1.1%
UK ETS (Dec-26)	£58.89/tonne	-0.2%
JKM LNG (front-month)	$21.41/MMBtu	+1.6%
TTF Gas (spot)	$20.61/MMBtu	+0.8%

Storage and Supply Outlook

European gas inventories remain roughly 12 percentage points below the same point last year, according to AGSI data cited by TotalEnergies. That gap has not closed at any point this injection season.

The spread across the continent is as wide as ever. Italy sits at 78% and Spain at 73%, but France is at 62%, Germany 49%, the Netherlands and Belgium at 41% and 43%, and Britain at 40%.

British sites are going backwards. Holehouse Farm is 70% full, South Hook 69%, Stublach 68%, Holford 63%, Hornsea 45%, Aldbrough 37%, Isle of Grain 36%, Hill Top 35% and Dragon 33%. Rough and Humbly Grove remain at zero.

Compare that with Thursday and the direction is wrong. Aldbrough has gone from 41% to 37%, Hill Top from 44% to 35% and South Hook from 72% to 69%. Britain is drawing down storage in the middle of injection season, which is not what a comfortable system does.

The arrivals schedule into North West Europe carries ten cargoes and 994 mcm out to 23 August, nine American and one from Trinidad and Tobago. None is booked into a British terminal.

TotalEnergies puts European LNG imports at an average of 315 mcm/day so far in August, below the same period in 2025.

What This Means for Your Business

Q4-26 closed on 7 August at 139.23p and settled Friday at 154.35p. That is 15.12p a therm in five trading sessions, and this morning it is indicated another 2.42p higher again.

Sep-26 has added 15.28p over the same five sessions and Winter-26 14.67p.

A gas quote issued before 10 August is not slightly out of date. It is 15p a therm out of date, and on a 1 GWh annual gas load that difference is worth roughly £5,100 a year.

This is still a seasonal repricing rather than a commodity repricing. Winter-26 sits 55.19p above Summer-27 while Summer-28 has barely moved at 69.58p, which is the argument for buying a winter in pieces rather than on a single screen price.

On power, Friday is a warning about which number you judge a contract by. The day-ahead fell 14.6% in one session while every forward contract on the curve rose. Anyone watching the prompt saw a market falling apart; anyone watching the curve saw the opposite, and the curve is what a supply contract is priced from.

The balancing floor makes the same point from underneath, and a fixed price absorbed none of it while anything on pass through absorbed all of it.

The watch list into this week is specific. Heysham 1 comes fully off today and Torness 1 on 21 August, the EC46 temperature forecast has turned below seasonal normal, European storage is still 12 percentage points behind, Britain is drawing down its own sites in injection season, and the JKM premium over TTF has widened again.

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Previous report: UK Energy Market Report – 14 August 2026