Snapshot - 12 September 2026
Wholesale gas and power fell back on Friday for the first time in a week, ending a five-session rally. The move was driven by better Norwegian supply, a warmer near-term weather outlook and improving wind, which together trimmed a few pence from the front of the UK gas curve and a few pounds from forward power. It did not last. Escalation in the Middle East over the weekend, including the indefinite postponement of talks on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a drone strike that forced Saudi Arabia to shut its main crude pipeline to the Red Sea, and a further attack on shipping, has pushed prices back above where they closed on Friday.
UK gas for the coming winter is now being offered in the low 210s in pence per therm, having traded around 150 a month ago. Forward power for the same period has followed, with the front season back up towards the £170/MWh area. The prompt is telling a different story from the curve: the physical system is comfortable this week, with mild temperatures, healthy UK production and improving wind, and day-ahead prices should ease as renewable output picks up from midweek. The curve is not trading this week's weather. It is trading the possibility that two of the world's most important energy transit routes stay compromised into the heating season, with European storage well below where the market would like it and UK stocks particularly thin.
Elsewhere, crude has climbed back into the high $100s per barrel and Asian LNG has gained more than 10 per cent on the week, both pointing the same way. Coal has been comparatively stable, and carbon has barely participated in the move at all, with both the European and UK schemes trading within a euro of where they started. Sterling was little changed. The practical read for buyers is that the risk premium now sits in the winter and the season beyond it rather than in the next fortnight, and that any material de-escalation would unwind quickly.
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