Weekly Energy Market Report - Week 36

Four settled sessions took NBP day-ahead up 16.60p a therm and UK baseload up 9.6%, and the single session after the bank holiday moved the gas prompt further than the other three put together.

This report covers the four settled sessions of 26, 27 and 28 August and 1 September, measured against the Tuesday 25 August close. Monday 31 August was a UK bank holiday and produced no settlement, so the week is complete as it stands.

NBP day-ahead finished the period at 178.00p a therm, up 16.60p or 10.3%, and UK day-ahead baseload at 153.70 £/MWh, up 13.52 or 9.6%.

Almost none of that was a trend. Three of the four sessions were small or negative, and the session after the bank holiday did the work.

Gas Market

The prompt alternated all week and then gapped. Day-ahead eased 0.90p to 160.50p on Wednesday, rose 6.00p to 166.50p on Thursday, fell 4.40p to 162.10p on Friday and then added 15.90p to 178.00p on Tuesday.

That last move is larger than the other three combined. The three sessions before the bank holiday moved the prompt 11.30p in total across both directions; 1 September moved it 15.90p in one.

The curve finished up across its whole width. Oct-26 gained 14.16p to 178.29p, Q4-26 13.51p to 180.77p, Winter-26 13.07p to 178.42p and Q1-27 12.62p to 176.02p, between 7.7% and 8.6%.

The far curve kept pace in percentage terms for once. Summer-27 rose 11.10p to 117.02p, a 10.5% gain that beat every near contract on the board, with Winter-27 up 10.00p to 113.13p and Summer-28 4.51p to 77.20p.

Note the front month rolled inside this window. Sep-26 dropped off the board after 28 August, so the figures above track Oct-26, the one forward quoted on all four sessions.

Britain lost a run it had held every session this report has covered. NBP settled 178.00p on Tuesday against Spain’s PVB at 177.53p, so Britain is 0.47p off being the cheapest hub in Europe for the first time.

The discount to the Dutch hub had been closing all week before that. NBP sat 5.06p under TTF on Wednesday, 4.39p on Thursday, 4.43p on Friday and 3.07p on Tuesday.

Norwegian maintenance is the single thread running through all of it. Sleipner went down on 27 August until 22 September for around 11 mcm/day, Asgard lost 7.2 mcm/day to a compressor fault, Gullfaks went for unplanned work on 30 August and Cygnus began maintenance on 31 August.

Then Kollsnes took roughly 40 mcm/day out over the bank holiday weekend itself. Norwegian planned outages were scheduled to climb from 40.14 mcm/day on 28 August to 71.14 on the 29th and 77.14 on the 30th, which is the shape of the gap-up that followed.

IUK maintenance started on 1 September and exports to Belgium stopped entirely, from 33.50 mcm/day to zero, so Britain kept the gas at home rather than importing more.

LNG did not help. Deliveries into Europe were nominated near 200 mcm/day on 1 September, roughly half the previous session, while Asian spot went to $25.07/MMBtu, its highest since March, which is competition for the cargoes rather than supply of them.

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

Electricity Market

UK day-ahead baseload closed the period at 153.70 £/MWh, up 13.52 or 9.6%, and day-ahead peak at 151.41, up 16.50 or 12.2%.

The relationship between those two blocks is the week’s oddity. Peak settled 2.41 £/MWh above baseload on Wednesday, 2.84 below on Thursday, 12.58 above on Friday and 2.29 below on Tuesday.

Four sessions, four alternating signs. A block relationship that normally holds for weeks changed direction on every single day of this window.

The forwards were far calmer than the prompt. Oct-26 rose 9.23 to 137.72 £/MWh, Q4-26 8.65 to 143.73, Winter-26 8.41 to 143.64 and Q1-27 8.16 to 143.54, between 6.0% and 7.2%.

Power and gas ended the week disagreeing about winter. Gas widened its Q4-over-Q1 premium to 4.75p a therm; power narrowed its own to 0.19 £/MWh, so the electricity board now prices the two winter quarters as nearly the same thing.

The nuclear stack tightened inside the window. Listed outage impact held at 1,503 MW across the three August sessions and stepped up to 1,945 MW from 31 August, when Heysham 1 reactor 1 went from a partial to a full 610 MW outage.

Another 1,920 MW is scheduled between 4 and 7 September, in Heysham 2 reactor 8 at 660 MW, Torness 1 at 640 MW and Hartlepool 2 at 620 MW, all full-unit outages.

Balancing prices were violent throughout. The daily spread between the cheapest and dearest half hours ran 125.45 £/MWh on 26 August, 176.85 on the 27th, 133.35 on the 28th, 164.80 on the bank holiday and 182.10 on 1 September.

That last one is the widest of the run, and it contains the lowest system sell price of the run at 22.90 £/MWh at 14:48, against a buy price of 205.00 six hours later on the same day.

Wind is why. Forecast wind and solar output sat near 7,950 MWh on 28 August against a seasonal norm around 9,750, and today reads about 8,400 against a norm near 9,900, before roughly 14,350 MWh arrives tomorrow.

Oil, Carbon and Global Commodities

Brent M+1 closed the period at 94.65 $/barrel, up 6.07 or 6.9%, having spent the first three sessions below 90 and then added 6.55 in the last one alone.

The turn is geopolitical. Talks on reopening the Strait of Hormuz had been pulling the risk premium out of the price through the August sessions; the United States and Iran then returned to open confrontation, and TotalEnergies has oil at six-week highs.

Coal API2 for Cal-27 rose 7.24 to $134.23/tonne, up 5.7% and the highest of this run, gaining in every session of the window.

Carbon was the exception, and it is the week’s most useful signal. Both schemes fell while gas rose 10.3%: EUA Dec-26 lost 1.08 to €83.34 and UK ETS Dec-26 1.75 to £59.21, down 1.3% and 2.9%.

That pulled the two schemes apart. At the prevailing sterling rates the UK allowance ended the period £12.17 a tonne below its European equivalent, against £11.26 on 25 August, which is the widest gap of this run.

UK obligation holders buy their allowances at a bigger discount than a week ago, and they do so while the commodity those allowances price has risen 10%. For anyone carrying a UK ETS position or reporting on it, the two markets have stopped moving together and that is worth measuring rather than assuming.

In LNG, JKM front month rose 1.75 to $25.07/MMBtu and TTF spot 1.82 to 24.50. Henry Hub added 0.20 to $2.90, leaving British gas at 8.3 times the American price against 8.2 at the start of the period.

Commodity	Price (1 Sep close)	Change (week)
Brent Crude (M+1)	$94.65/barrel	+6.9%
Coal API2 (Cal-27)	$134.23/tonne	+5.7%
EUA Carbon (Dec-26)	€83.34/tonne	-1.3%
UK ETS (Dec-26)	£59.21/tonne	-2.9%
JKM LNG (front-month)	$25.07/MMBtu	+7.5%
TTF Gas (spot)	$24.50/MMBtu	+8.0%

Storage and Supply Outlook

The whole of Britain’s storage gain came in one step at the start of the period and nothing has moved since. The country map read 46% on 26 August, 49% on the 27th, and 49% on every reading since, including today.

That is three points in one day and then five consecutive flat readings, which is a different picture from the six-point weekly gain the first and last numbers on their own would suggest.

Everyone else kept filling. Over the same period Belgium added five points to 53%, France four to 69%, the Netherlands three to 46%, Germany two to 52% and Italy two to 82%, with Spain unchanged at 73%.

Britain finishes the week bottom of that map with around nine weeks of injection season left, and it is the only one of the seven that has stopped adding.

At EU level TotalEnergies put inventories at 65.1% full on 30 August, roughly twelve percentage points below the same point last year, with daily injections near 3.9 TWh.

The UK site board turned today for the first time in this run, Stublach easing two points to 75% and Aldbrough two to 53%, with South Hook and Isle of Grain a point lower. Rough and Humbly Grove remain at zero throughout.

What This Means for Your Business

Q4-26 gas rose 13.51p a therm across these four sessions, worth roughly £4,610 a year on a 1 GWh gas load. Winter-26 power rose 8.41 £/MWh, about £8,410 a year on a 1 GWh electricity load.

The uncomfortable part is when it happened. A buyer who fixed on Friday afternoon and one who fixed on Tuesday morning are separated by 13.41p on Q4-26 gas, and nothing traded in between.

Three of the four sessions in this window were quiet or falling. A single fixing date placed anywhere in the first three would have looked like good timing right up until Tuesday, which is the argument for buying a renewal in tranches across several dates rather than backing one.

The calendar gap widened again too. Winter-26 at 178.42p stands 61.40p above Summer-27 at 117.02p, against 59.43p a week ago, worth about £20,951 a year on 1 GWh purely on which month a contract starts.

The week ahead has a full diary. Dvalin maintenance runs to 26 September, Heysham 2 reactor 8 takes 660 MW off on 4 September with Torness and Hartlepool following on the 6th and 7th, and the forecast turns below seasonal normal around 8 September.

Against that, Britain sits 49% full and no longer filling, and Brent is at six-week highs on Iran. Next week’s report picks up from the 1 September close.

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 35

For the following week’s energy market analysis, read our Weekly Energy Market Report, Week 37.