Weekly Energy Market Report - Week 34

NBP gas added 12p a therm across the near curve over six sessions, the balancing floor under UK power rose 70%, and Summer-27 gas went through 100p for the first time.

Gas Market Review

NBP Day-Ahead settled at 157.00p on 19 August against 145.00p on 11 August, a gain of 12.00p or 8.3%.

It got there in a straight line. The closes ran 148.50p, 149.60p, 150.75p, 152.60p, 157.25p and 157.00p, five rises and one fall of a quarter of a penny on the final session.

The forwards moved with it and slightly harder. Sep-26 added 12.17p to 156.39p, Q4-26 12.32p to 160.00p and Winter-26 12.87p to 157.83p, the largest near-curve gain of the period.

The far curve is the part that changed character. Summer-27 rose 9.37p to 100.62p, through the 100p handle for the first time, and Winter-27 8.96p to 99.76p. In percentage terms Summer-27 gained 10.3%, more than any contract on the near curve.

For most of this month the far curve was the one place holding still. Over these six sessions it was the fastest riser on the board.

Even so, the shape kept stretching. Winter-26 finished 57.21p a therm above Summer-27, against 53.71p on 11 August, so the winter premium widened by 3.50p. Anyone comparing where the NBP curve sits now against where it sat a fortnight ago is looking at a market that has repriced the level and the seasonal shape at once.

Britain stayed the cheapest hub in Europe for all but one session. NBP lost that position on 18 August, when it settled 157.25p against Spain’s PVB at 156.36p, and took it back the next day at 157.00p against 159.27p. The discount to TTF narrowed over the period, from 3.06p to 2.05p.

That gap is what keeps the pipes pointing outwards. Britain exported 42.79 mcm/day through IUK and BBL on the final morning, against LNG sendout of 8.10 mcm/day that has not moved for five sessions.

Supply was the driver at both ends. An unplanned outage at Kollsnes took almost 11 mcm/day out on 13 August, and on 19 August unplanned maintenance at Karsto cut Norwegian throughput by 50 mcm/day, dropping Continental Shelf nominations to 281.8 mcm/day, the lowest in around two months.

Storage did the rest. FNB Gas put German inventories at 50.06% on 17 August and called them critically low ahead of winter, and that is the specific fact behind Winter-26 holding near 158p while the prompt eased on the final session.

The card below summarises where NBP contracts stood after the six settled sessions of this period.

Electricity Market Review

UK day-ahead baseload settled at 140.66 £/MWh on 19 August against 133.24 on 11 August, up 7.42 or 5.6%. The path between those two points is the story.

The closes ran 149.15, 145.50, 124.30, 138.94, 143.00 and 140.66. That is a range of 24.85 £/MWh inside six sessions, including a 14.6% fall on 14 August and an 11.8% recovery on 17 August, to finish 7.42 higher than it started.

The forwards ignored all of it and simply went up. Sep-26 baseload added 6.10 to 126.10 £/MWh, Q4-26 7.26 to 131.35 and Winter-26 8.16 to 130.48, a gain of 6.7% and the largest on the board.

Further out, Summer-27 rose 5.62 to 86.36 and Winter-27 4.28 to 88.14, while Summer-28 managed 2.01 to 66.00. The prompt swung 25 £/MWh and the contracts a business actually buys moved between 2 and 8, all in one direction.

The clearest single number is the balancing floor. The daily minimum System Sell Price rose from 66.00 £/MWh on 11 August to 112.00 on 19 August, a rise of 70%, and it went up on every settled day from 13 August onwards. The cheapest half hour of the day nearly doubling tells you more about system tightness than the day-ahead average does, and at the top end the maximum System Buy Price touched 350.00 £/MWh on 17 August.

The supply schedule explains the forwards. Hartlepool 2 has been off since 7 August, Heysham 1 reactor 1 came fully off on 17 August for 15 days, Torness 1 follows on 21 August for 17 days and Heysham 2 reactor 8 goes off on 4 September for 80 days. French availability was also tight, with heat related restrictions peaking near 11.6 GW on 17 August before improving.

Wind was the swing factor. Output fell to roughly 5,000 MWh around 16 August against a seasonal norm near 9,550, recovered above 11,000 MWh on 18 and 19 August, and is forecast to trough again near 6,550 MWh on 23 August.

One structural point worth carrying forward. Baseload traded above peak all period, finishing 8.74 £/MWh above it, because midday solar holds the 07:00 to 19:00 window down. It is a summer artefact and it does not exist in the forwards, where Winter-26 peak is priced at 148.95 against 130.48 baseload.

Oil, Carbon and Global Commodities

Brent M+1 settled at 91.62 $/barrel on 19 August against 88.91 on 11 August, up 2.71 or 3.0%, and it went through the 90 dollar handle on 17 August for the first time in this run.

The Strait of Hormuz did the work. Attacks on shipping early in the period and deadlocked talks between the United States and Iran throughout kept a risk premium in the price that had been draining out of it in early August.

Coal API2 for Cal-27 added 2.32 to $127.06/tonne, a rise of 1.9%.

Carbon went the other way from everything else. EUA Dec-26 eased 0.73 to €81.71 and UK ETS Dec-26 slipped 0.09 to £59.04.

At the 19 August rate of 1.1681 the European allowance is worth about £69.95, which puts the UK scheme £10.91 a tonne below its European equivalent, against £11.34 on 11 August. The advantage of sitting on the UK side of that gap narrowed by 43 pence a tonne over the period.

The LNG complex rose faster than either. JKM front month gained 1.43 to $22.09/MMBtu and TTF spot 1.57 to $21.56, moves of 6.9% and 7.9%, comfortably ahead of the 3.0% on oil.

Sterling firmed against the dollar, from 1.3504 to 1.3603, and was broadly flat against the euro at 1.1681.

Commodity	Price	Change (12 to 19 Aug)
Brent Crude (M+1)	$91.62/barrel	+3.0%
Coal API2 (Cal-27)	$127.06/tonne	+1.9%
EUA Carbon (Dec-26)	€81.71/tonne	-0.9%
UK ETS (Dec-26)	£59.04/tonne	-0.2%
JKM LNG (front-month)	$22.09/MMBtu	+6.9%
TTF Gas (spot)	$21.56/MMBtu	+7.9%

Storage and Supply Outlook

EU gas storage stood at roughly 60.8% full on 15 August, which TotalEnergies describes as still below the level seen at this point in recent years, and European inventories remain around 12 percentage points behind the same point in 2025.

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

Britain is the emptiest system on that list, and it barely moved over the period. At site level Holehouse Farm finished at 70% full, South Hook 66%, Holford and Stublach 64% each, Hornsea 47%, Isle of Grain 35%, Aldbrough and Dragon 33% and Hill Top 27%, with Rough and Humbly Grove still at zero.

The reason sites are not filling is in the curve rather than the weather. Summer gas costs more than the winter it would be injected for, and that gap widened by another 3.50p a therm over these six sessions, so the arithmetic of filling a site got worse, not better.

LNG is the other half of it. Continental European imports averaged roughly 333 mcm/day through August on S&P Global Commodity Insights data, but the arrivals schedule into North West Europe for 20 to 23 August carries ten cargoes and 947 mcm with not one booked into a British terminal, including a cargo from the Russian Federation into Dunkirk on 21 August. That is why UK sendout has sat at 8 mcm/day for five consecutive sessions.

The Week Ahead, Procurement Outlook

Put the period in renewal terms. Q4-26 gas closed 11 August at 147.68p and 19 August at 160.00p, so a quote issued a week ago is 12.32p a therm out of date.

On a 500,000 therm winter requirement that is a little over £61,000.

The harder question is the far curve. Summer-27 through 100p and Winter-27 within a quarter of a penny of it removes the argument that this repricing is confined to the next two winters.

It does not follow that a buyer should cover everything at once. The winter premium at 57.21p is close to its high for the run, so the near and far ends are still priced as different markets, and businesses able to buy a winter separately from the rest of the term keep the better hand. What has changed is that waiting for the far end to stay still is no longer free.

Three things are worth watching in the days ahead. Torness 1 comes off on 21 August, putting 1,870 MW of nuclear out at once alongside Heysham 1 and Hartlepool 2 for roughly two days, and wind troughs near 6,550 MWh on 23 August, about 3,000 MWh under the seasonal norm.

Karsto is out again by 23 mcm/day and planned maintenance has started at Asgard, so Norwegian supply is not settled. And German storage sits at 50% with its own operator calling it critically low, which is the single fact most likely to keep Winter-26 bid.

The next weekly will cover 20 August onwards once those sessions 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 33

For the following week’s energy market analysis, read our Weekly Energy Market Report, Week 35.

For more recent analysis, read our Weekly Energy Market Report, Week 36.