UK Energy Market Report - 24 September 2026

Nine of eleven NBP gas contracts give back the 22 September recovery, day-ahead power falls a second session to £152.55/MWh, and every contract on both boards is marked higher this morning

Gas Market

The selling was flat right across the winter strip. Nov-26 fell 3.03p to 182.66p, Dec-26 2.96p to 184.50p, Q4-26 2.96p to 182.21p, Winter-26 2.93p to 181.25p, Oct-26 2.90p to 179.48p, Q1-27 2.90p to 180.28p and day-ahead 2.75p to 182.25p.

Seven contracts inside a 0.28p range of movement, all of them between 1.49% and 1.63%, is a curve shifting down as one rather than a market trading individual seasons.

The far curve barely engaged. Summer-27 lost 0.75p to 130.11p and Winter-27 0.86p to 126.80p, both under 0.7%, and the only two risers were the furthest out: Summer-28 added 0.36p to 82.56p and Winter-28 1.31p to 90.00p.

Step back a week and the split is sharper. On 16 September Winter-26 closed at 195.79p and Winter-27 at 126.79p. Winter-26 is now 14.54p lower, a fall of 7.43%; Winter-27 is one hundredth of a penny higher. Seven sessions of selling have come out of the coming winter and out of nothing else.

Britain is still the cheapest of the seven European hubs, but the margin has halved again. At 182.25p, NBP sits 1.07p under the Dutch TTF at 183.32p, against 2.10p a session earlier and 3.30p before that, and only 0.69p under France’s PEG at 182.94p. Germany’s THE is at 184.60p, Austria’s VTP 185.61p, Spain’s PVB 189.95p, and Italy’s PSV dearest at 193.71p.

The morning marks published yesterday were long on everything. Day-ahead was indicated at 184.20p and settled 182.25p, 1.95p over; Oct-26 was shown at 184.08p against a 179.48p close and Winter-26 at 186.21p against 181.25p, out by 4.60p and 4.96p. The Summer-28 mark of 106.99p finished 24.43p above its settlement, the second morning running that contract was marked at a level nothing traded near.

At 09:25 today every gas contract is marked up, and by a wide margin: day-ahead 186.90p, Oct-26 186.97p, Winter-26 189.25p and Q1-27 188.55p, between 4.65p and 8.27p above their closes, with Summer-27 at 135.95p and Winter-27 at 132.00p. That is the third morning running the curve has been marked above the previous close, and on each of the last two the market then settled lower still. Summer-28 at 84.99p is at least back within 2.43p of reality.

Norway is still the supply story and it has not improved. Exit nominations are running at 224.2 mcm/day, below the 226.1 quoted here yesterday, which this report suggested should be the low point of the episode. It was not. The unplanned Troll outage has been extended another day, still cuts about 46 mcm/day and now runs to 27 September, while Aasta Hansteen and Åsgard ease to 8 and 5 mcm/day.

Deliveries into Britain took the brunt. At the 07:00 read Langeled is at 9.00 mcm/day and Vesterled and Flags at zero, 9.00 in total, against 14.00 and 6.00 at the same stamp yesterday. Like for like on the morning figure, Norwegian pipeline gas into Britain has more than halved inside a day.

The system still opened about 24 mcm/day long. Demand has fallen to 123.56 mcm/day from 136.62 at yesterday’s afternoon read, UKCS production to 85.40 from 88.00, and linepack has built 16.19 to 362.46. Exports are holding at 34.52 mcm/day, 26.70 to Belgium through IUK and 7.82 to the Netherlands through BBL, while LNG send-out has eased to 11.40. A mild day with weak demand and a long system is why losing half the Norwegian imports did not move the prompt.

Electricity Market

Day-ahead baseload settled at £152.55/MWh, down £9.20 or 5.69%, and peak at £151.10, down £4.01 or 2.59%. Peak stays below baseload but the gap has closed to £1.45 from £6.64. That day-ahead has now settled at £103.95, £28.00, £198.43, £161.75 and £152.55 across five sessions, and the last two are the only pair in the run that resemble each other.

The forward curve fell in step with gas, which it had not done the day before. Dec-26 baseload lost £2.15 to £147.00, Q4-26 £1.17 to £146.17, Oct-26 £0.96 to £141.87, Winter-26 £0.94 to £147.23 and Q1-27 £0.71 to £148.31, with Summer-27 and Winter-27 off £0.55 and £0.78 to £102.90 and £104.65. Winter-28 alone rose, by £0.37 to £80.02.

The peak board did the same a little harder: Dec-26 down £2.15 to £172.42, Q4-26 £1.73 to £170.13, Oct-26 £1.58 to £162.63, Nov-26 £1.44 to £175.50 and Winter-26 £1.36 to £170.05, with Winter-28 again the only riser.

The power marks split the other way from gas. Day-ahead baseload was offered at £150.50 and settled £2.05 higher, the prompt undershooting for once, while every forward was long again: Oct-26 marked £145.00 against £141.87, Nov-26 £154.25 against £149.75, Q4-26 £150.00 against £146.17 and Winter-26 £149.75 against £147.23.

At 09:25 today day-ahead baseload is offered at £160.00, £7.45 above yesterday’s settlement, with wind at the bottom of its forecast range. Oct-26 is marked £147.00, Nov-26 £157.00, Q4-26 £152.00, Q1-27 £157.00 and Winter-26 £154.48. Oct-26 is the only peak contract quoted, at £168.50.

The imbalance market corrected this report again, far less brutally than on 22 September. The part-day row published here yesterday read £206.00 at the top and £105.54 at the bottom; 23 September settled with a maximum System Buy Price of £221.91 at 18:18 and a minimum System Sell Price of £88.00 at 15:19, so the ceiling came in £15.91 higher and the floor £17.54 lower. Both misses run the same way as the day before, because a row stamped mid-morning has not yet seen the afternoon or the evening, which is when the extremes print.

Today’s part-day row reads £209.00 at 05:18 and £120.65 at 23:48. A minimum timed at a quarter to midnight on a table published at 09:25 is the clearest possible sign the row is not settled data, and neither figure should be read as the day’s range. The four settled days before it produced maximum buy prices of £233.00, £239.00, £594.00 and £221.91, and 20 September also printed a minimum sell price of minus £50.00.

Wind explains the shape of the week ahead. Combined wind and solar generation is forecast near 8,100 MWh today, the low point of the window, recovering to around 11,500 by the 26th, falling back to about 8,700 on the 28th, then climbing to roughly 14,000 across the 29th and 30th before easing to about 10,800 on 1 October. The seasonal norm across that window is close to 10,350, so today and the 28th are the two days well below par, and gas-for-power demand has risen to 40 mcm/day on the day-ahead in response.

Temperatures stay above the seasonal mean every day to 1 October, near 14.7°C today and about 16.0°C tomorrow against a mean easing from 13.4°C to 12.9°C, so heating demand is not the pressure. Nuclear outages are unchanged at 2,725 MW across five units, as they have been since 16 September, though Heysham 1 reactor 1 returns to outage on 29 September for a hundred days at a reduced impact of 112 MW.

Oil, Carbon and Global Commodities

Brent broke its run. It settled at $103.08/barrel on 23 September, up $3.83 or 3.86%, ending five consecutive falls. That lifts it back above the $101.21 of 9 September, though it remains $5.67 under the $108.75 it reached on the 15th.

Coal went quietly the other way, easing $0.69 or 0.52% to $133.22 a tonne on Cal-27, which gives back under a third of the $2.30 it had gained the session before.

The LNG benchmarks all softened except the American one. JKM fell to $25.73/MMBtu from $26.05, NBP spot to $24.12 from $24.68 and TTF spot to $24.34 from $25.00, while Henry Hub rose to $3.06 from $2.90. Asia’s premium over Britain widened back out to $1.61 from $1.37, which is the wrong direction for anyone hoping cargoes keep choosing Europe.

The two carbon markets parted. EUA Dec-26 fell €0.72 to €86.01 while UK ETS Dec-26 added £0.10 to £58.22. At 1.1635 the UK allowance is worth about €67.74, a €18.27 discount to the European price, narrowed from €18.97.

Sterling eased on both crosses, 0.0023 to 1.1635 against the euro and 0.0102 to 1.3237 against the dollar. The dollar move matters more than usual on a day oil rose 3.86%, because it adds to the sterling cost of every dollar-priced barrel and cargo.

Storage and Supply Outlook

British storage fell two points to 51% on the country map and is still the emptiest of the seven readings shown. The other six did not move: France 79%, Italy 85%, Spain 73%, Germany 56%, and the two overlapping Benelux labels at 54% and 59%. European storage as a whole was around 70.1% full on 21 September, materially below where it stood a year earlier.

The individual sites tell a better story than the country figure. The import terminals refilled hard while the seasonal caverns drew down: South Hook jumped 17 points to 84% and Isle of Grain 10 points to 34%, while Aldbrough lost 6 points to 51%, Stublach 4 to 75% and Hill Top 2 to 39%. Hornsea added a point to 67%. Dragon at 33%, Holehouse Farm at 70% and HolFord at 75% were unchanged, Rough remains empty and Humbly Grove sits at 1%.

That is a market restocking its terminals from arriving cargoes and running its caverns down while it does so. The 88 mcm cargo landing at Milford Haven today, which is where South Hook sits, is the visible half of the same movement.

Ten cargoes carrying about 885 mcm are due at northwest European terminals between today and 28 September, two of them British: 88 mcm at Milford Haven from the United States today and 80 mcm at Isle of Grain from Algeria tomorrow. Four of the ten come from the United States, three from Algeria and one from Norway.

Norway is the one to watch into next week. The planned work is clearing, but Troll now runs to 27 September and on its own cuts about 46 mcm/day, exit nominations are lower than they were yesterday rather than higher, and Vesterled is delivering nothing into Britain at all.

What This Means for Your Business

For fixed-price buyers the reference points are Winter-26 at 181.25 p/therm and £147.23/MWh, about 6.18 p/kWh for gas and 14.7 p/kWh for power at wholesale, before network costs, levies and supplier margin.

A week earlier, on 16 September, those two contracts closed at 195.79p and £159.84/MWh. A winter price struck on yesterday’s curve is 14.54p and £12.61 better than one struck a week before, 7.43% on gas and 7.89% on power, and all of it arrived in seven sessions nobody called in advance.

What makes the week unusual is where the move landed. Winter-27 gas closed at 126.80p against 126.79p a week earlier, and Winter-27 power at £104.65 against £106.00. Every penny of relief sits in the winter that starts in five weeks and almost none in the winter after, so a requirement split across both seasons has had one half repriced and the other stand still. That is the practical case for spreading a purchase across several dates and several seasons rather than fixing the lot on one morning.

The two winters keep converging as a result. Winter-26 now stands 54.45p above Winter-27 on gas, against 69.00p a week ago, and £42.58 above it on power against £53.84. A twenty-four month deal still buys a discount over a twelve month one, but that discount has thinned by more than a fifth in a week, and anyone waiting for the longer deal to look obviously cheap is watching the reason to wait shrink.

A practical warning sits in this morning’s numbers. For the third session running the indicative curve is marked above the previous close, twice now on every single contract, and on each of the last two occasions the market then settled lower. A price taken off a morning indication is not a price taken off a settlement, and lately the difference has run to several pence a therm.

The supply side is where the risk to all of this sits. Norwegian deliveries into Britain have more than halved in a day, Vesterled is at zero, Troll runs to 27 September and British storage is the emptiest in Europe at 51%. None of that moved the prompt this week, because demand is mild and the system is long, but it is the sort of exposure a winter gas position is bought to cover, and it has not gone away.

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, 23 September 2026