Energy Market Report - 13 August 2026
Unresolved negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz, now at the end of a 60-day window, continue to sit underneath a European energy complex that rallied sharply on Wednesday on heat, weak wind and a solar eclipse that struck at the worst possible hour. Gas and power both settled materially higher, while crude was almost unchanged and carbon eased on both the EU and UK schemes.
Natural Gas
Gas prices firmed because cooling demand arrived on top of a supply picture that has been quietly loosening for weeks and has now tightened. Day-ahead NBP settled 3.50p higher at 148.50 p/therm and TTF day-ahead at €60.39/MWh, with continental hubs clustered around €61/MWh. Norwegian supply is the immediate constraint: total Gassco exit nominations stand at 318.9 mcm/day this morning against 326.2 mcm/day observed on Wednesday, UK-bound flows are nominated 3 mcm/day lower at 60 mcm/day following the return of Vesterled to zero, and a 9 mcm/day loss at Ormen Lange is expected to run until February 2027. UK LNG sendout is steady at 8 mcm/day with no cargoes scheduled, though ten arrivals are booked into north-west Europe between 14 and 19 August, mostly from the United States. Storage remains the underlying worry, with EU inventories around 59 per cent full and German sites at 48.6 per cent, both below the five-year average with a limited injection window left. The curve has repriced accordingly, with Winter 26 up 5.49p to 150.44 p/therm and every month from September through January now trading above 149 p/therm.
Electricity
Power followed gas higher but with a distinctly domestic twist. UK day-ahead baseload settled at £149.15/MWh, up £15.91 and among the highest of the year, while day-ahead peak settled below it at £137.71/MWh - an inversion caused by strong midday solar rather than anything structural. Wednesday's partial solar eclipse removed that solar output precisely into the evening ramp, with the day-ahead auction clearing at £211.42/MWh for the 19:00 to 20:00 hour and the system operator issuing a margin notice for the 18:00 to 20:00 window. Wind offered no cushion, running at 3 to 4 metres per second and forecast to stay below seasonal norms into next week, leaving CCGT to carry the evening peak. Continental context matters here too: French nuclear has lost roughly 15 per cent of its available capacity to high river temperatures, low water levels and jellyfish ingress across nine reactors, which lifted French and German prompt prices and limited the help available through the interconnectors. Further out, Winter 26 baseload rose £3.01 to £125.33/MWh and Cal 27 sits at £92.85/MWh, with UK nuclear facing a dense outage schedule from 17 August.
Other Commodities
Crude was remarkably quiet given the news flow, with Brent front-month settling at $88.98/bbl and WTI at $83.27/bbl, both up eight cents. A 17.4 million barrel build in US crude stocks in the week to 7 August was offset by the US Energy Information Administration's assumption that some 600,000 barrels per day of Middle East production stays offline through the end of 2027, and by the International Energy Agency cutting both its demand and supply forecasts for the year. Coal firmed, with API2 ARA CIF Cal 27 up $1.01 to $125.75/tonne. Carbon eased on both schemes: EUA Dec 26 fell €0.45 to €81.99/tonne while UK ETS Dec 26 fell £0.73 to £58.40/tonne, equivalent to €68.42/tonne, widening the UKA discount to around €13.60/tonne. Global LNG benchmarks continued to run ahead of everything else, with JKM at $21.26/MMBtu against north-west European LNG at $19.76/MMBtu and Henry Hub at $2.80/MMBtu, a spread that will keep flexible cargoes heading east rather than into European storage. Sterling was steady at 1.1715 against the euro and 1.3492 against the dollar.