Energy Market Report - 08 May 2026
European energy markets opened higher on Friday after Thursday's broad-based decline, as overnight reports of US-Iran naval clashes in the Strait of Hormuz and renewed attacks on UAE infrastructure brought a geopolitical risk premium back into front-end pricing. The move comes against a backdrop of comfortable physical supply and improving wind forecasts, leaving the curve caught between near-term political risk and a fundamentally well-supplied summer.
Natural Gas
NBP day-ahead opened at 109.70 p/therm with morning indicative levels firming towards 112.00 p/therm, while NBP front-month settled at 106.87 p/therm on Thursday and TTF Jun-26 closed at €43.56/MWh, both since recovering the bulk of Thursday's losses. Norwegian unplanned outages at Troll (21.9 mcm/d, compressor failure) and Kårstø (5 mcm/d, process problems) have now been resolved, lifting exit nominations to 279 mcm/d and flows to the UK to around 51 mcm/d on stronger Langeled deliveries of 37.70 mcm/d. UK LNG send-out is steady at 12 mcm/d, with the system around 7 mcm/d long and demand at 178.99 mcm. EU storage stood at 34.25% on 5 May with UK sites at 25%, leaving a sizeable summer injection task that continues to underpin the Win-26 to Sum-27 spread. UK temperatures are forecast to fall below seasonal norms from 10 May and remain below into mid-June, supporting near-term LDZ demand.
Electricity
UK baseload day-ahead settled at £107.00/MWh on Thursday, down £1.92/MWh, before tracking gas higher in early Friday trade. Win-26 closed at £93.16/MWh and Cal-27 at £79.37/MWh, with morning indicative levels firmer across the curve. Wind generation has underperformed across NW Europe this week, leaving CCGT as the largest source of GB power and lifting prompt volatility, but forecasts now point to wind rising above seasonal norms across the weekend and into next week. The nuclear fleet remains constrained, with Heysham 1-1 in a 130-day planned outage, Torness-1 offline since 1 May, Heysham 2-8 entering planned maintenance today, and Sizewell B-1 and B-2 outages stacked into late May. Continental power tracked similarly, with German Cal-27 baseload hitting €90/MWh, a three-week low, on weaker EU ETS prices.
Other Commodities
Brent front-month settled at $100.06/bbl on Thursday, down $1.19 on the day and roughly $12/bbl over the week, before adding around $3/bbl in early Friday trade on the Hormuz news. WTI sat at $94.81/bbl. Coal ARA CIF Cal-27 closed at $117.25/t, broadly steady on the day but down 3.84% on the week, with the curve tracking softer European power demand. EUA Dec-26 settled at €75.13/t, down €0.92/t, with UK ETS Dec-27 down €1.56/t in equivalent terms, both reflecting softer power demand expectations and a subdued EU industrial backdrop. JKM M+1 closed at $16.80/MMBtu against Henry Hub at $2.70/MMBtu, leaving the transatlantic spread firmly supportive of US LNG flows into Europe through the summer. Sterling softened modestly, with GBP/EUR at 1.1573 and GBP/USD at 1.3551.