Snapshot - 05 February 2026
Gas prices corrected higher on Wednesday, with NBP day-ahead settling at 82.90p/therm and the front month pushing above 83p this morning. The move was driven by a return of cooler mid-February signals in the latest EC operational run and persistent weakness in European storage, which at 39.23 per cent sits almost 13 percentage points below year-ago levels – the widest deficit of the winter so far. Wind kept the UK power prompt soft, with day-ahead baseload down over £6 to £81.57/MWh, though generation is expected to ease from tomorrow, lifting gas-for-power demand. Norwegian flows are steady and LNG arrivals healthy, but the structural storage deficit is keeping a firm floor under Summer 26 contracts as the market prices increased injection-season risk.
Brent jumped more than 3 per cent to $69.46/bbl on escalating US–Iran tensions after a drone shootdown and a Strait of Hormuz confrontation, though prices have eased this morning as diplomatic talks remain on track for Friday in Oman. Saudi Aramco's decision to cut the Arab Light official selling price for Asia to its lowest since late 2020 reinforces the message of comfortable medium-term supply despite the geopolitical noise. Carbon drifted lower, with EUAs off marginally and UKAs down 65p to £62.18/tonne, weighed by growing political momentum towards ETS reform – the European Commission is expected to detail a softer regime in Q3, with several member states pushing to slow the pace of cap reductions.
Across the Atlantic, the EIA reported a record 360 bcf storage withdrawal for the week ending 30 January, flipping US inventories from surplus to deficit versus the five-year average in a single week. The late-January arctic blast cut up to 18 per cent of US gas production through freeze-offs while pushing demand 25 per cent above seasonal norms. Separately, data showed that EU reliance on US and Russian LNG hit a record above 80 per cent in January, with several officials warning of the strategic vulnerability this creates. The full report covers the detailed supply-demand picture, curve movements, nuclear outage impacts, and our read on the key risks heading into the second half of February.
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