Weekly Energy Market Report - Week 33

Gas added more than 8p a therm across the near curve in two sessions, day-ahead power rose 46%, and the Winter-26 premium over Summer-27 widened by 8p a therm.

Gas Market Review

NBP Day-Ahead closed Friday at 136.25 p/therm and Tuesday at 145.00p, a gain of 8.75p or 6.4% across the two sessions. Monday alone added 10.40p, and Tuesday gave back 1.65p.

The curve did more work than the prompt. Sep-26 rose 13.77p on Monday and lost 5.50p on Tuesday, finishing 8.27p up at 144.22p, while Q4-26 followed the same shape to close 8.44p higher at 147.68p.

Monday’s move was priced as a supply problem, not a demand one. TTF front month climbed almost 10% on lower LNG inflows, subdued storage injections and renewed uncertainty around the Strait of Hormuz, and healthy renewable output across Britain offset none of it.

Norway supplied the durable part. Gassco extended the partial Ormen Lange outage to 1 February 2027, which removes winter supply flexibility rather than summer volume, and network curtailments stood at 28.2 mcm/day on Tuesday with a rise to 33.3 mcm/day expected by 18 August.

That is why Tuesday’s correction was shallow. TotalEnergies attributed the pullback to the previous session having run ahead of itself rather than to anything changing underneath.

The far end barely joined in. Summer-27 finished 0.25p higher at 91.25p and Summer-28 0.48p higher at 67.48p, against roughly 8p on everything inside next winter.

So the whole move landed in one place. Winter-26 closed Friday at 136.69p against Summer-27 at 91.00p, a step down of 45.69p a therm; by Tuesday that gap was 53.71p.

The winter premium widened by 8.02p a therm in two sessions, and it is the largest single line in any autumn renewal quote. Anyone looking at what the wholesale curve is actually charging for next winter should be reading Q4-26 and Winter-26, not the day-ahead headline.

One structural point held throughout. Britain took no LNG cargoes at all, sendout stayed at 8.10 mcm/day and it exported 46.15 mcm/day to the continent, finishing Tuesday as the cheapest of the seven European hubs quoted at 145.00p, against TTF 148.06p and Italian PSV 154.62p.

Being the cheapest hub in Europe in mid-August is not the advantage it sounds like, because it is what keeps the pipes pointing outwards.

The card below summarises where NBP contracts stood after the two settled sessions of this week.

Electricity Market Review

UK day-ahead baseload settled at 91.07 £/MWh on Friday, 125.82 on Monday and 133.24 on Tuesday. That is 42.17 £/MWh higher across the two sessions, a rise of 46.3%.

Almost none of that is structural. Wind was forecast to fall from around 11,500 MWh towards 5,500 MWh by 16 August against a seasonal norm near 9,500, and a heatwave was peaking mid-week.

Nuclear thinned the stack further. Hartlepool 2 has been off since 7 August on a 16-day outage removing 620 MW, Heysham 1 reactor 1 ran at 498 of 610 MW throughout, and French outages peaked around 10.7 GW on heat constraints and a jellyfish influx, thinning the interconnector cushion on an evening peak.

The balancing market shows where the pressure actually sat. The daily minimum System Sell Price ran minus 14.07 £/MWh on Sunday 9 August, 47.77 on Monday and 66.00 on Tuesday, while the daily maximum System Buy Price eased from 227.00 to 202.61. The spread compressed from below, not from above.

Forward power moved far less. Sep-26 baseload added 4.86 to 120.00 £/MWh across the two sessions, Q4-26 5.60 to 124.09 and Winter-26 5.49 to 122.32, all gains of under 5%.

That gap is the useful signal. A business on a fixed contract felt none of the 46% day-ahead move; a business exposed to the day-ahead felt all of it, and the forward price of next winter changed by less than a fifth as much.

The peak block is the other thing worth registering. Friday’s day-ahead peak settled at 53.35 £/MWh, some 37.72 below baseload, which is a midday solar signature rather than cheap power; by Tuesday it was 119.32 against baseload at 133.24.

On the power curve, Winter-26 stood 41.58 £/MWh above Summer-27 at Tuesday’s close, up from 38.11 on Monday. No comparable Friday settlement for Summer-27 baseload is available, so that is a one-session move rather than a week-to-date one.

Oil, Carbon and Global Commodities

Brent was the clearest mover outside gas. It settled Friday at 83.55 $/barrel, jumped 4.17 on Monday and added 1.19 on Tuesday to finish at 88.91 $/barrel, up 6.4% on the week to date.

Hormuz drove all of it. Transits fell to six vessels on Monday against a ten-day average near eleven, and both the United States and Yemen’s Houthis reported separate attacks on shipping on Tuesday.

Carbon went the other way, which is the divergence worth naming. EUA Dec-26 eased 1.0% to €82.44 and UK ETS Dec-26 fell 2.3% to £59.13, so energy commodities rose hard on supply risk while both compliance markets slipped.

That prices the move as a molecule problem rather than a carbon-cost one, and it left the UK scheme roughly £11.34 a tonne below its European equivalent, against £10.93 on Friday.

Commodity	Price (Tue close)	Change (week to date)
Brent Crude (M+1)	$88.91/barrel	+6.4%
Coal API2 (Cal-27)	$124.74/tonne	+5.0%
EUA Carbon (Dec-26)	€82.44/tonne	-1.0%
UK ETS (Dec-26)	£59.13/tonne	-2.3%
JKM LNG (front-month)	$20.66/MMBtu	+5.7%
TTF Gas (spot)	$19.99/MMBtu	+6.8%

Tuesday 11 August 2026 settlement. Change measured against Friday 7 August close, covering the two settled sessions of this week.

Storage and Supply Outlook

European inventories moved from 58.1% full on 5 August to 59.12% on 9 August, roughly 12 percentage points below the same point last year.

The spread across the continent is what makes that uncomfortable. Italy sits at 77% and Spain at 72%, but France is at 59%, Germany 47%, Britain 42%, and the Netherlands and Belgium 39% each. Germany below 50% and the Netherlands below 40% in the second week of August is the line to carry forward, because those two set the marginal winter call on LNG.

Analysts cited by TotalEnergies now expect Europe to struggle to refill much beyond 70 to 75% before winter without a sustained increase in LNG imports, and that is what the 8p on Q4-26 and Winter-26 is pricing. Imports are running near 343 mcm/day so far in August, roughly 17% above July, but not by enough to close a 12 point gap before the injection season ends.

British site storage is close to static. South Hook is 74% full, Stublach 68%, Holford 61%, Aldbrough 49%, Hornsea 41% and Dragon 33%, while Rough and Humbly Grove remain at zero.

The arrivals schedule into North West Europe carries ten cargoes to 19 August, six of them American, with Gate due 103 mcm from the Russian Federation on 15 August. Not one is booked into a British terminal.

The Week Ahead, Procurement Outlook

Put the move in renewal terms and it becomes concrete. Q4-26 gas closed Friday at 139.24p and Tuesday at 147.68p.

Anyone who quoted an autumn start last week and has not gone back to the client is 8.44p a therm out of date. On a 500,000 therm winter requirement that is a little over £42,000.

The more important point is that Tuesday’s sell-off did not undo it. A curve that falls in parallel has repriced; a curve that falls back through its own move has not, and this one fell in parallel.

For a business with a Q4 start date, that spread is the argument for splitting a winter requirement across several purchase dates rather than committing the whole volume to one screen price, because two sessions have just moved the cost of that decision by 8p a therm without much changing on the headline.

Four things are worth watching for the rest of the week. Temperatures peak mid-week before easing, wind troughs around 16 August, Norwegian curtailments rise to 33.3 mcm/day by 18 August, and Heysham 1 reactor 1 comes fully off on 17 August for 15 days.

Hormuz stays the wildcard. The risk premium that entered oil and gas on Monday can leave as quickly as it arrived if transits normalise, and it can double if they do not.

The next report will cover the full week of 10 to 14 August once Thursday and Friday have settled.

For a view tailored to your consumption profile and renewal window, speak to one of our energy consultants today.

Previous report: Weekly Energy Market Report, Week 32

For the following week’s energy market analysis, read our Weekly Energy Market Report, Week 34.

For more recent analysis, read our Weekly Energy Market Report, Week 35.