UK Energy Market Report - 25 September 2026

Every one of the 33 contracts on the gas, baseload and peak boards settles higher, day-ahead power jumps £8.68 to £161.23/MWh, and Britain gives up the cheapest-hub position it had held since 17 September

Gas Market

The buying was concentrated in the winter strip and it was almost perfectly even. Q1-27 rose 8.35p to 188.63p, Winter-26 8.23p to 189.48p, Dec-26 8.18p to 192.68p, Q4-26 8.10p to 190.31p, Oct-26 8.08p to 187.56p, Nov-26 8.05p to 190.71p and day-ahead 7.75p to 190.00p.

Seven contracts inside a 0.60p range of movement, every one of them between 4.25% and 4.63%, is the mirror image of the flat shift down that this report described a session earlier. The curve is moving as one block in both directions.

The far curve took part but at half the pace. Summer-27 added 4.61p to 134.72p and Winter-27 3.13p to 129.93p, while the two furthest contracts barely engaged: Summer-28 rose 2.02p to 84.58p and Winter-28 2.00p to 92.00p.

Britain is no longer the cheapest gas market in Europe. At 190.00p, NBP now sits 1.20p above France’s PEG at 188.80p, having been 0.69p below it a session earlier. Britain had been the cheapest of the seven hubs on every settlement this report has covered since 17 September.

It cuts both ways, though. NBP’s discount to the Dutch TTF actually widened, to 1.61p from 1.07p, with TTF at 191.61p, so Britain got cheaper against the continental benchmark and dearer than France in the same session, because PEG rose only 5.86p against NBP’s 7.75p. Spain’s PVB is at 190.49p, Germany’s THE 192.69p, Austria’s VTP 194.69p and Italy’s PSV dearest at 196.56p.

The morning marks published here yesterday were too low at the front for the first time in the run. Day-ahead was indicated at 186.90p and settled 190.00p, 3.10p under. But Winter-26 was marked 189.25p against a 189.48p close and Q1-27 188.55p against 188.63p, out by 0.23p and 0.08p, which are the closest marks this report has carried.

The back end stayed long. Winter-27 was marked 132.00p and settled 129.93p, 2.07p over, and Summer-27 135.95p against 134.72p. So the same morning index was 3.10p light on the prompt and 2.07p heavy two winters out.

Yesterday this report noted the curve had been marked above the close for a third morning running, and that on each of the previous two the market then settled lower still. It did not happen a third time, so that pattern is worth nothing as a forecast.

At 09:27 today the marks have inverted completely. Day-ahead is indicated at 182.47p, down 7.53p, with Oct-26 at 181.73p, Winter-26 184.06p, Q1-27 183.60p, Summer-27 133.10p and Winter-27 128.95p, between 0.98p and 7.53p below their closes. Winter-28 at 92.00p is the only contract not marked down.

Norwegian exit nominations have turned. They stand at 240.3 mcm/day this morning, 19.0 higher than the 221.3 that 24 September finished at, which ends four consecutive daily falls. The rise comes from several large planned maintenance outages returning to service, against an unplanned outage at Åsgard still cutting about 5.9 mcm/day. On yesterday’s figure, a correction: 24 September was given here as 224.2 mcm/day and it settled at 221.3.

None of the recovery has reached Britain yet. At the 07:00 read both Norwegian pipelines are at zero, Langeled and Vesterled and Flags alike, against 9.00 mcm/day combined at the same stamp yesterday. Deliveries were reported rising by about 1 mcm/day later in the morning, but on the like-for-like morning figure Britain is taking no Norwegian pipeline gas at all.

The system still opened about 11 mcm/day long, less than half yesterday’s 24. What paid for that was exports, not supply. Britain cut its flow to Belgium through IUK to 16.60 mcm/day from 27.40, sending 10.80 less, while BBL to the Netherlands held at 8.12.

Elsewhere the balance tightened. Demand eased to 125.81 mcm/day from 133.34 at yesterday’s afternoon read and UKCS production to 87.80 from 88.20, while LNG send-out fell to 8.10 across Isle of Grain at 3.20, down from 6.50, and South Hook unchanged at 4.90. Linepack drew down 10.90 to 334.16.

Electricity Market

Day-ahead baseload settled at £161.23/MWh, up £8.68 or 5.69%, and peak at £161.40, up £10.30 or 6.82%. Peak has crossed back above baseload by £0.17, after sitting £1.45 below it yesterday and £6.64 below it the day before.

Day-ahead has now settled at £103.95, £28.00, £198.43, £161.75, £152.55 and £161.23 across six sessions. That is a range of £170.43 between the highest and lowest settlement inside a fortnight.

The forward curve rose in step and, like gas, it rose almost uniformly. Q1-27 added £5.19 to £153.50, Oct-26 £5.15 to £147.02, Winter-26 £5.09 to £152.32, Dec-26 £5.02 to £152.02, Q4-26 £4.99 to £151.16 and Nov-26 £4.82 to £154.57, six contracts inside 37p of movement.

Further out the moves shortened, Summer-27 up £3.65 to £106.55 and Winter-27 £2.93 to £107.58.

The peak board ran harder at the front. Nov-26 rose £6.27 to £181.77, Q1-27 £5.87 to £175.84, Winter-26 £5.54 to £175.59, Q4-26 £5.21 to £175.34, Dec-26 £5.02 to £177.44 and Oct-26 £4.39 to £167.02.

One of yesterday’s marks deserves its own line. Oct-26 baseload was offered here at £147.00 and settled £147.02, out by two pence, which is the closest this report has come on any contract. Day-ahead baseload was offered £160.00 and settled £1.23 higher.

The rest of the forward marks were long again, as they have been for most of the month: Q1-27 was shown £157.00 against a £153.50 close, Nov-26 £157.00 against £154.57, Winter-26 £154.48 against £152.32 and Q4-26 £152.00 against £151.16, with Oct-26 peak £168.50 against £167.02.

At 09:27 today day-ahead baseload is offered at £131.75, £29.48 under yesterday’s settlement and the widest single-morning gap this report has carried. Treat it as an indication and nothing more.

The forward marks have hardly moved by comparison. Oct-26, Nov-26 and Dec-26 are level with their closes, Q4-26 is £150.00, Q1-27 £153.00 and Winter-26 £151.49, while Winter-27 at £108.66 is the only contract marked up.

The imbalance market produced a first. The part-day row published here yesterday gave a maximum of £209.00 and 24 September settled at exactly £209.00, timed 05:14. That is the first time the part-day maximum has held.

That is timing rather than method: the peak printed at 05:14, before the table was even stamped, so nothing was left in the session to beat it. The minimum proves the point. Published here at £120.65 off a 23:48 stamp, and flagged yesterday as the clearest possible sign the row was not settled data, it settled at £105.00 at 16:48, £15.65 lower.

Today’s part-day row reads £211.90 at 05:48 and £121.10 at 04:48, both again timed in the small hours. The four settled days before it ran £239.00 and £114.43 on 21 September, £594.00 and £103.05 on the 22nd, £221.91 and £88.00 on the 23rd, and £209.00 and £105.00 on the 24th.

Wind sets the shape of the week ahead. Combined wind and solar generation is forecast near 8,900 MWh today, about 10,800 over the weekend, roughly 6,800 on 28 September, then a spike to about 14,900 on the 30th. Against a seasonal norm near 10,400 that makes the 28th the day which will lean hardest on gas, and gas-for-power demand is already forecast 16 mcm/day higher day on day.

Temperatures are above the seasonal mean on every one of the eight days to 2 October, near 16.0°C today against a mean of 13.4°C, so heating demand is not what is driving any of this.

Nuclear availability is unchanged at 2,725 MW of outage across five units, as it has been since 16 September. Two of the five reach the end of their scheduled duration today on the schedule’s own arithmetic, Torness 1 at nineteen days from 6 September and Heysham 1 reactor 1 at seventeen days from 8 September, which would return 1,250 MW. Both are still carried at full impact, and that column is a plan rather than a record of a return, so treat it as due rather than done. Heysham 1 reactor 1 then goes back out on 29 September for a hundred days at a reduced 112 MW impact.

Continental nuclear pulled the other way. Reported extensions to outages at Chooz, St Alban and St Laurent pushed October French baseload back towards €154/MWh, which feeds into British forwards through the interconnectors.

Oil, Carbon and Global Commodities

Brent settled at $106.60/barrel on 24 September, up $3.52 or 3.41%, a second consecutive rise. Two sessions have now added $7.35, or 7.41%, from the $99.25 of 22 September, leaving Brent $2.15 below the $108.75 it reached on the 15th.

Six of the seven benchmarks tracked here rose. Henry Hub alone fell, easing six cents to $3.00/MMBtu, which is the one price in the table with nothing to do with European supply.

The LNG benchmarks all firmed. JKM added $0.65 to $26.38/MMBtu, NBP spot $0.99 to $25.11 and TTF spot $0.99 to $25.33. Asia’s premium over Britain narrowed to $1.27 from $1.61, a reversal of yesterday’s widening and the right direction for anyone hoping cargoes keep choosing Europe.

Carbon rose on both sides of the Channel for once. UK ETS Dec-26 added £1.55 to £59.77, a 2.66% move that is the largest single-day change in the table, while EUA Dec-26 rose €0.95 to €86.96.

At 1.1630 the UK allowance is worth about €69.51, a €17.45 discount to the European price, narrowed from €18.27. Sterling eased on both crosses for a second session, 0.0005 to 1.1630 against the euro and 0.0022 to 1.3215 against the dollar, which adds a little to the sterling cost of a barrel that has just risen $7.35 in two days.

Storage and Supply Outlook

British storage slipped another point to 50% on the country map and remains the emptiest of the seven readings shown. The other six did not move for a second session: France 79%, Italy 85%, Spain 73%, Germany 56%, and the two overlapping Benelux labels at 54% and 59%. European storage as a whole stood at about 70.2%, with German inventories at 56.99%.

The refill stopped. Yesterday this report described the import terminals restocking hard while the seasonal caverns drew down; today not one British site rose.

South Hook gave back a point to 83% and Isle of Grain a point to 33%, despite the 88 mcm cargo landing at Milford Haven in between. Aldbrough lost four points to 47% and Stublach three to 72%. Dragon at 33%, Hill Top 39%, Holehouse Farm 70%, HolFord 75% and Hornsea 67% were unchanged, Rough is empty and Humbly Grove sits at 1%.

The cargo schedule explains part of it. Ten cargoes carrying about 983 mcm are due at northwest European terminals between today and 28 September, but only one of them is British: 80 mcm arriving at Isle of Grain from Algeria today. Five of the ten come from the United States and two from Algeria.

After it the British book is empty on this schedule while Wilhelmshaven, Fos, Gate, Montoir and Dunkirk all take deliveries. Britain is not competing hard for these cargoes, which is comfortable in mild weather and less so in November.

Today’s outage schedule carries UK entry-terminal availability in place of the Norwegian field detail, so the Troll position reported here yesterday cannot be updated in either direction. What can be said is that the aggregate Norwegian exit figure has turned up while the two pipelines into Britain sat at zero on the morning read.

What This Means for Your Business

For fixed-price buyers the reference points are Winter-26 at 189.48 p/therm and £152.32/MWh, about 6.47 p/kWh for gas and 15.2 p/kWh for power at wholesale, before network costs, levies and supplier margin.

One session has taken back a large part of last week’s relief. Winter-26 gas closed 8.23p dearer than it did on 23 September and Winter-26 power £5.09 dearer.

A week earlier, on 17 September, those two contracts closed at 192.64p and £154.59/MWh. Measured from there, a winter price struck on yesterday’s curve is still 3.16p and £2.27 better, 1.64% on gas and 1.47% on power. That is a thin return for seven sessions, and a session earlier it was a great deal wider.

The shape of the week has also inverted. Yesterday this report said every penny of the move sat in Winter-26 and almost none in Winter-27. Measured to 24 September that is no longer true: Winter-27 gas has risen 4.17p from 125.76p a week ago to 129.93p and Winter-27 power £3.10 to £107.58, so the winter after next is now dearer than it was a week ago while the coming winter is cheaper.

The spread between the two winters tells the same story. Winter-26 stands 59.55p above Winter-27 on gas and £44.74 above it on power, against 66.88p and £50.11 a week ago, but 54.45p and £42.58 only yesterday. One session put back 5.10p of the 12.43p of gas convergence the week had delivered.

A twenty-four month price still buys a genuine discount over a twelve month one, and that discount is thinner than it was a week ago. But it is not moving in a straight line, and a decision that depends on it moving in a straight line is not a decision, it is a bet. That is the practical argument for buying a requirement in tranches across several dates rather than holding out for a level.

The power prompt makes the same case more bluntly. Day-ahead baseload has settled at £103.95, £28.00, £198.43, £161.75, £152.55 and £161.23 over six sessions. A business sitting on a flexible or pass-through power contract is exposed to that range directly, week by week, which is the difference a fixed-term electricity contract is there to remove.

The supply position is the part that has not improved. Norwegian pipeline gas into Britain was at zero on both pipes at the 07:00 read, British storage is the emptiest in Europe at 50%, and one cargo on the four-day schedule is coming here. None of that pushed the prompt down; the prompt rose 4.25%. The system stayed long because Britain cut its exports to Belgium by 10.80 mcm/day, not because anything arrived.

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, 24 September 2026