UK Energy Market Report - 28 September 2026

All gas contracts settle lower on 25 September, reversing the session before, and Winter-26 gas ends the week 16.91p cheaper while Winter-27 moves only 1.57p

All NBP gas contracts, all power contracts settled lower on 25 September, thirty-three out of thirty-three, the exact reverse of the session before. Gas day-ahead fell 10.70p or 5.63% to 179.30 p/therm.

Power fell further. Day-ahead baseload settled at £130.14/MWh, down £31.09 or 19.28%, and peak dropped £56.47 to £104.93, which leaves peak £25.21 below baseload.

Across the week, the coming winter did all the moving. Winter-26 gas finished 16.91p cheaper than on 18 September; Winter-27 finished 1.57p cheaper. And at 09:23 this morning every gas and every baseload contract is marked higher again.

Gas Market

The front of the curve fell almost exactly as far as it had risen. Oct-26 lost 7.76p to 179.80p, Q4-26 7.68p to 182.64p, Nov-26 7.67p to 183.04p and Dec-26 7.60p to 185.08p, four contracts inside 0.16p of each other. Winter-26 fell 7.32p to 182.16p and Q1-27 6.95p to 181.68p.

Day-ahead fell hardest and is now 2.95p below its 23 September close of 182.25p, from before the rally started. The rest of the front strip is back within a penny and a half of that close: Oct-26 is 0.32p above it, Winter-26 0.91p and Q1-27 1.40p.

The far curve gave back less. Summer-27 fell 3.43p to 131.28p and Winter-27 2.46p to 127.47p, while Summer-28 lost 0.41p to 84.17p and Winter-28 0.52p to 91.47p.

Britain is now the second-cheapest hub. France’s PEG fell 10.10p to 178.70p and NBP sits 0.60p above it, half the 1.20p gap of a session earlier. The Dutch TTF fell 11.18p to 180.43p, so NBP’s discount to the continental benchmark narrowed to 1.13p from 1.61p. Germany’s THE is at 181.34p and Austria’s VTP at 184.25p.

Two hubs barely took part. Spain’s PVB fell only 2.37p to 188.12p, and Italy’s PSV rose 0.13p to 196.69p, the one hub in the table to finish higher. Italy now trades 17.39p above Britain, against 6.56p a session earlier.

The marks published here on 25 September got the direction right and the size wrong. Ten of the eleven contracts were marked below the previous close, and every mark quoted then settled lower still. Day-ahead was indicated at 182.47p and settled 179.30p, 3.17p under; Oct-26 was marked 181.73p against 179.80p, Winter-26 184.06p against 182.16p and Winter-27 128.95p against 127.47p.

Build nothing on that. A session earlier the same index was 3.10p light on the prompt and 2.07p heavy two winters out, on the same page.

At 09:23 today every gas contract is marked higher. Day-ahead is indicated at 184.75p, up 5.45p, with Oct-26 at 184.72p, Winter-26 186.96p, Q1-27 186.46p, Summer-27 134.00p and Winter-27 129.90p. Even so, Winter-26 is marked 2.52p under where it settled on 24 September.

Norwegian exit nominations stand at 259.6 mcm/day this morning, 19.3 higher than the 240.3 reported here on 25 September, helped by a temporary easing of maintenance. Network curtailments of 110.3 mcm/day on 25 September were expected to fall to 98.47 on the 26th and 46.87 on the 27th, with further maintenance due to start on 29 September.

Troll is back in the detail. The last report could not update it because the outage table had been swapped for terminal availability; this morning’s commentary puts the compressor failure at a continuing 46 mcm/day cut, now extended to 29 September. An unplanned outage at Åsgard took a further 5.6 mcm/day on 25 September.

This time some of it is reaching Britain. At the 07:00 read Langeled is delivering 13.00 mcm/day, against zero on both Norwegian pipelines at the same stamp on 25 September. Vesterled is still at zero.

Exports eased as well. The IUK flow to Belgium is 12.80 mcm/day from 16.60 on the last morning read, and BBL to the Netherlands has stopped, from 8.12. UKCS production is 92.00 mcm/day from 87.80, while LNG send-out is unchanged at 8.10, Isle of Grain 3.20 and South Hook 4.90. The system opened about 11 mcm/day long.

Electricity Market

Day-ahead baseload settled at £130.14/MWh, down £31.09 or 19.28%, and peak at £104.93, down £56.47 or 34.99%. Peak has dropped back below baseload, by £25.21, one session after crossing above it by £0.17.

Seven sessions of day-ahead baseload now read £103.95, £28.00, £198.43, £161.75, £152.55, £161.23 and £130.14. The gap between the highest and lowest is still £170.43.

The forward curve fell in step with gas, and as evenly as it had risen. Oct-26 lost £4.93 to £142.09, Nov-26 £4.83 to £149.74, Q4-26 £4.69 to £146.47, Winter-26 £4.51 to £147.81, Dec-26 £4.34 to £147.68 and Q1-27 £4.31 to £149.19, six contracts inside 62p of movement.

As with gas, that leaves the front of the power curve a little above its 23 September close: Oct-26 by £0.22, Winter-26 by £0.58 and Q1-27 by £0.88. Further out, Summer-27 fell £2.08 to £104.47 and Winter-27 £1.23 to £106.35.

The peak board fell hardest at the front of the winter. Nov-26 lost £6.28 to £175.49, Q4-26 £5.41 to £169.93, Oct-26 £5.23 to £161.79, Winter-26 £5.05 to £170.54, Dec-26 £4.76 to £172.68 and Q1-27 £4.66 to £171.18.

The 25 September marks were long across the forward board. Q4-26 was shown at £150.00 and settled £146.47, Q1-27 £153.00 against £149.19 and Winter-26 £151.49 against £147.81, each between £3.53 and £3.81 over.

Day-ahead was offered at £131.75 and settled £1.61 below it. After a £29.48 gap to the previous close that looks prescient, and it is luck: this index has shown no reliable direction and no reliable error size all month.

At 09:23 today every baseload contract is marked higher. Day-ahead is offered at £135.25, up £5.11, and Nov-26 at £157.00, up £7.26 and the largest move on the board, with Winter-26 at £151.75 and Winter-27 £110.00. Oct-26 peak is offered at £167.50, £5.71 higher.

A correction on the imbalance market. The last report said the 24 September part-day maximum had held exactly at £209.00, the first time it had done so. This morning’s settled table carries 24 September at £220.00, timed 16:44, with the minimum at £106.87 at 13:44. The row it was measured against has itself been revised, so that claim is withdrawn.

The wider point is that a row can move after it stops being a part-day figure. Read the system prices quoted here as the latest print rather than a final one.

The 25 September part-day row missed badly on the floor. Published here at £211.90 and £121.10, the day settled at £222.08 at 18:44 and £4.49 at 12:44, the minimum out by £116.61.

The weekend took the floor below zero on both days: £200.40 and minus £28.10 on 26 September, £206.45 and minus £14.27 on the 27th, both minimums at lunchtime. Today’s part-day row reads £257.80 at 04:48 and £70.00 at 03:18, with most of the session still to come.

Wind sets the shape of the week. Combined wind and solar generation is forecast near 6,800 MWh today, below a seasonal norm near 10,500, then about 14,500 on 29 and 30 September, before falling back to around 8,600 to 8,900 on 1 and 2 October and near 6,100 on the 3rd. Gas-for-power demand is already forecast 30 mcm/day lower day on day.

Temperatures are forecast above the seasonal mean on every day to 5 October, near 14.5°C today against a mean close to 13°C, peaking near 18.5°C on 30 September.

Nuclear outages fell to 2,255 MW from the 2,725 MW carried in the last report. Torness 1 has left the table, as its schedule said it would, returning 640 MW.

Heysham 1 reactor 1 has not. The last report said its seventeen-day outage was due to end on 25 September and that the column was a plan rather than a record. It has since been extended to twenty-one days from 8 September, and its later reduced-output period now starts on 3 October for 96 days rather than on 29 September.

Two smaller unplanned entries have appeared: 115 MW at Heysham 2 reactor 7, carried from 16 September, and 55 MW at Hartlepool 1 from today for twelve days. Hartlepool 2 remains out at 620 MW and Heysham 2 reactor 8 at 660 MW.

Oil, Carbon and Global Commodities

Brent settled at $104.32/barrel on 25 September, down $2.28 or 2.14%, ending two sessions of gains. Sterling rose 0.0036 against the dollar to 1.3251, so in sterling terms the barrel fell 2.40%, to about £78.73.

Every benchmark in the table fell except Henry Hub, which rose 21 cents or 7.00% to $3.21/MMBtu, the mirror of the session before, when it was the only one to fall. It is also the one price here with no link to European supply.

The LNG spread moved the wrong way for Britain. JKM fell $0.56 to $25.82/MMBtu, but NBP spot fell $1.35 to $23.76 and TTF spot $1.42 to $23.91, so Asia’s premium over Britain widened to $2.06 from $1.27. That more than undoes the narrowing reported a session earlier, and it is the spread cargo traders watch.

Carbon slipped on both sides. UK ETS Dec-26 fell £0.35 to £59.42 and EUA Dec-26 €0.18 to €86.78. At 1.1622 the UK allowance is worth about €69.06, a €17.72 discount to the European price, a little wider than €17.45 a session earlier. Coal API2 Cal-27 was almost flat at $134.27/tonne.

Market commentary this morning has Brent rebounding on reports that the US rejected an Iranian proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That cuts against the easing of risk premium that pulled oil and gas lower on 25 September.

Storage and Supply Outlook

British storage fell another two points over the weekend to 48% on the country map, still the emptiest of the seven readings shown. Most of the continent went the other way: France rose two points to 81%, Italy one to 86%, and the two overlapping Benelux labels to 57% and 61% from 54% and 59%. Germany held at 56% and Spain at 73%. European storage as a whole was put at about 70.4%.

The British caverns did the drawing. Hill Top more than halved, from 39% to 18%, Stublach fell 14 points to 58% and Aldbrough 11 points to 36%.

Against that, Isle of Grain rose nine points to 42%, after the Algerian cargo that was due there on 25 September, and Hornsea added three to 70%. South Hook slipped three to 80%. Dragon at 33%, Holehouse Farm 70% and HolFord 75% were unchanged, Rough is empty and Humbly Grove sits at 1%.

The cargo schedule has no British delivery on it. Ten cargoes carrying about 940 mcm are due at northwest European terminals between today and 1 October, at Dunkirk, Fos, Zeebrugge, Eemshaven and Gate. Five come from the United States and one each from Trinidad and Tobago and Algeria; two carry no stated origin, and one, an 85 mcm delivery to Dunkirk on 29 September, is from Russia.

With Asia’s premium widening and none of those cargoes heading here, Britain’s marginal supply this week is Norway and its own shelf. That is why 13 mcm/day through Langeled counts for more than its size.

What This Means for Your Business

For fixed-price buyers the reference points are Winter-26 at 182.16 p/therm and £147.81/MWh, about 6.22 p/kWh for gas and 14.8 p/kWh for power at wholesale, before network costs, levies and supplier margin.

Measured settlement to settlement over the week, it was a good one for anyone buying the coming winter. Winter-26 gas fell 16.91p or 8.49% from 199.07p on 18 September, and Winter-26 power £11.14 or 7.01% from £158.95.

It did almost nothing for the winter after. Winter-27 gas fell 1.57p from 129.04p and Winter-27 power £0.65 from £107.00. So the spread between the two winters narrowed to 54.69p on gas from 70.03p, and to £41.46 on power from £51.95, about a fifth off each in a week.

In practice that makes fixing gas for a contract starting this autumn cheaper than it was a week ago, while a start date a year out has barely moved. For a business choosing between a twelve and a twenty-four month term, the extra saving from locking in the second year is smaller than it was.

The route there was not smooth. Winter-26 gas rose 8.23p on 24 September, fell 7.32p on 25 September and is marked 4.80p higher this morning. A buyer trying to pick the single right day has been whipsawed twice in three sessions, which is the case for spreading a purchase across several dates rather than betting on one.

The supply side has not improved to match the price. British storage is the lowest in Europe at 48% and falling, no LNG cargo on the schedule is British, and the one piece of good news, 13 mcm/day through Langeled, arrives with more Norwegian maintenance due on 29 September. The price fell on calmer geopolitics and mild weather, not on gas arriving.

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, 25 September 2026