Snapshot - 01 September 2026
August ended quietly and September has opened anything but. Friday's session saw UK gas drift lower, with day-ahead losing a few pence and the winter contracts easing by a similar margin as better wind forecasts and cooler weather trimmed near-term demand expectations. It looked, briefly, like the market was ready to take some risk premium out.
That has reversed comprehensively over the bank holiday weekend. A fresh exchange of strikes between US and Iranian forces around the Strait of Hormuz has pushed gas sharply higher this morning, with the prompt and the winter contracts both indicated more than eleven pence above Friday's close. Physical supply was already tightening before the geopolitics arrived, with a heavy Norwegian maintenance programme cutting flows into the UK and European storage sitting well below where it stood at this point in either of the last two years.
Power is following gas rather than driving it. Forward baseload eased on Friday but is firmly higher this morning. Within the day the market swung by more than £180/MWh, running high overnight, collapsing through the middle of the afternoon as wind arrived, then ramping hard into the evening peak. Wind has recovered strongly from a very weak August and is displacing a substantial amount of gas-fired generation, but a lower nuclear baseline through September will keep the winter supply picture tight.
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