Snapshot - 07 August 2026
UK and European gas markets rallied firmly on Thursday, with day-ahead NBP and the front of the curve gaining around 6 to 7 per cent on the session. The driver was a combination of a fresh unplanned Norwegian outage, reduced pipeline nominations into the UK, and a forecast drop in wind output across north-west Europe that lifts expected gas burn in power generation. Contracts across the winter and the front months moved together, and the strength has carried into Friday morning. That said, the move needs context: the front season is still trading meaningfully below where it sat a fortnight ago, so this looks more like a correction within a downtrend than the start of a new rally.
Power rose but lagged gas noticeably. Day-ahead baseload gained only a couple of pounds while day-ahead peak actually fell, held down by strong midday solar output. The practical effect is that generator margins compressed, with day-ahead CCGT economics tipping from marginally positive to marginally negative on the day. Intraday prices remain extremely volatile, spanning the mid-teens per megawatt hour in the early afternoon to close to £200 in the evening ramp, and Wednesday's session saw prices turn negative in the middle of the day. Nuclear availability is now thinning as planned outages begin, and the continental backdrop is deteriorating as drought reduces hydro output and forces nuclear curtailments.
Across the wider complex, crude rallied by nearly 4 per cent as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz thinned further and reports of attacks on vessels in the Red Sea corridor added a second layer of risk premium. Both crude benchmarks are nonetheless still well down on the week. Coal was quiet and remains lower over seven days, while carbon firmed modestly on both the EU and UK schemes without materially changing the discount at which UK allowances trade to their EU equivalents. Sterling was effectively unchanged. Storage remains the medium-term concern, with European inventories sitting more than twelve percentage points below year-ago levels and refill running behind the pace required for the autumn targets.
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