Snapshot - 17 July 2026
Wholesale energy markets are being driven by geopolitics rather than weather. A sixth night of US-Iran strikes has kept a substantial risk premium in near-dated gas, and NBP front-month and Q4 contracts have added close to 9 per cent over the week, with front-month gas now trading in the mid-130s p/therm and Q4 approaching 140p. The far curve tells a different story, with Summer-27 and Winter-27 both easing, which suggests the market sees genuine disruption risk but not a structural shift.
Power is following gas rather than leading it. UK day-ahead baseload dropped sharply on Thursday on a stronger wind forecast, settling in the mid-£120s/MWh, but is being marked back up towards £130/MWh this morning as wind steps down and gas-fired generation picks up the slack. The forward curve is firmer, with Q4 baseload now offered in the low-£120s/MWh. British nuclear availability is thin, with several units offline and further outages scheduled from 20 and 31 July, while French nuclear is contending with outages and heat-related cooling constraints.
Elsewhere, crude eased on the day but is heading for its strongest week since April, with Brent in the mid-$80s/bbl. Coal was quietly firmer. Carbon was the exception, falling around 2.4 per cent across both the EU and UK schemes, with the UKA-EUA spread broadly unchanged - a parallel move on softer prompt power rather than anything UK-specific. European storage remains the fundamental worry, sitting more than 10 percentage points below year-ago levels with injections running behind schedule.
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