Snapshot - 19 October 2026
UK and European gas markets started the week where they finished the last one, at the highest levels of the year. Front-month NBP has traded through 220 p/therm, with day-ahead in the mid-210s, and Dutch TTF has pushed above €89/MWh. The move is being driven by geopolitics rather than weather: attacks on shipping around the Strait of Hormuz are at record levels, the conflict in Yemen is widening, and European storage is sitting well below where it normally would be at this point in October. Norwegian supply disruptions at two major fields have added to the nerves, even though aggregate flows have held up.
Power has followed gas higher but with noticeably less conviction. Front-month UK baseload is trading around the £170/MWh mark, having gained roughly half as much as gas over the past week, which has squeezed generation margins to the point where running a gas plant at the front of the curve barely covers its fuel and carbon costs. Intraday conditions have been volatile, with prices swinging from under £50/MWh overnight at the weekend to above £250/MWh on Monday’s morning peak. Nuclear availability remains a constraint both in the UK and on the Continent, though a strong wind front arriving on Thursday should ease prompt pressure into the back half of the week.
Elsewhere, crude settled Friday near a five-month high above $109/bbl before slipping back as Washington’s easing of Russian sanctions raised the prospect of additional supply. Coal continued its slow grind higher. Carbon was the exception to the week’s firmness, with both EU and UK allowances drifting lower and the spread between them broadly unchanged. Sterling gained against both the euro and the dollar. The fuller picture, including the forward curve detail, supply-side fundamentals and the intraday pricing record, is covered in the full market update.
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