Snapshot - 08 October 2026
UK gas rose for a third consecutive session on Wednesday, with the day-ahead contract settling in the mid-180s p/therm and winter contracts pushing towards the high 190s. The driver is risk rather than weather: escalating conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, a confirmed strike on a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and threats to shipping lanes further east have all added premium. Underneath that, European storage sits well below seasonal norms and extended Norwegian field outages have cut flows to the UK, so the forward curve has firmed even though the prompt system is comfortably supplied.
Power told two different stories. Forward contracts followed gas higher, with front-winter baseload settling above £155/MWh, but day-ahead prices collapsed by around £25/MWh as gale-force winds arrived and wind generation roughly tripled its share of the stack. Continental day-ahead markets fell further still. With UK wind forecast above 17 GW into the weekend, prompt prices are being offered far below Wednesday’s settlement, while thin nuclear availability keeps the forward curve supported.
The most significant move elsewhere was in carbon. UK allowances jumped more than 4 per cent to a seven-month high on reports that a deal has been struck to link the UK and EU emissions trading schemes, narrowing the long-standing discount of UK allowances to European ones. Crude settled a touch lower but has since traded above $103 a barrel on Gulf shipping risk and a US storm shutting in offshore output, and global LNG benchmarks were higher across the board. The full report carries every settlement, the complete monthly and seasonal strips, half-hourly system price and imbalance analysis, clean spark economics and the supply-side detail behind the move.
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