Snapshot - 17 August 2026
European gas and power markets started the week on the front foot, and the reason has little to do with the weather. The 60-day US-Iran truce expires this evening with talks over the Strait of Hormuz going nowhere, and traders have spent the past week adding a risk premium accordingly. UK day-ahead gas settled in the high 140s to low 150s p/therm and is offered higher again this morning, while the front winter contract has gained around 10 per cent over the week. Physical supply is not the problem: Norwegian flows are strong, UKCS output has picked up, and the UK system opened long this morning. Storage is the problem, with European stocks sitting around 60 per cent and roughly 12 percentage points below last year.
Power has followed gas higher and then added its own difficulties. Wind has been exceptionally weak so far today, accounting for under 2 per cent of the generation mix, and balancing prices spiked above £340/MWh in the early hours as margins tightened. UK nuclear is entering a heavy outage window, with one Heysham unit going offline today and Torness following later this week, while French nuclear availability is being squeezed by both drought and heat. Continental day-ahead baseload is trading in the mid-£150s equivalent across Germany, France and the Netherlands. Forward UK baseload firmed across the curve, though the moves were smaller than in gas.
In the wider complex, crude held its range with Brent in the high $80s, coal drifted slightly lower, and Asian LNG firmed to keep a modest premium over northwest Europe. Carbon was the exception, easing on both schemes, with EUAs in the low €80s and UK allowances in the high £50s. That leaves the UK allowance at a discount of roughly £11/tonne to the European equivalent, which remains the key variable for anyone comparing UK and continental generation economics. Sterling firmed marginally against both the dollar and the euro.
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