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Wholesale Electricity and Gas Prices:
Seasonal Future Development
Electricity UK Baseload
UK NBP Gas
Trader Insight
Trader commentary updated 06/10/2026
Near- and mid-term UK gas and power contracts saw another volatile week across the last 7 days as an eroding geopolitical premium reversed hard into a 4% surge on contracting Hormuz transits and a collapse in wind. NBP front contracts gained close to 7 p/therm this morning, Nov-26 is trading as high as 190.9 p/therm against a front that was testing 180 p/therm support last Tuesday. Summer-27, now the front season, stands at 143.00 p/therm and still settles above Winter-27 at 128.81 p/therm, an inversion signalling that storing summer gas for winter 2027 no longer pays. Dutch TTF front-month firmed from €73.40/MWh last Tuesday to €74.5/MWh this morning. Power told a different story: N2EX cleared £170.6/MWh today against £142.8/MWh last Tuesday, up £27.83 or 19.5%, but nothing from Nov-26 through Winter-27 has traded, leaving Nov-26 marked at £152.95/MWh and the gas move unconfirmed in power.
Transit data explains the bid. Kpler recorded 157 Hormuz crossings in the week to the 4th of October, down 22.7% from 203, ballast movements falling from 78 to 46 and 70.1% logged as route undetermined. The IMO confirmed damage to four crude tankers, Al Funtas, Sinbad, Mersin Prosperity and Kazimah III, taking its total to 91; UKMTO had reported the LNG carrier Al Ruwais struck on the 29th of September without damage.
The prompt tightened physically. Wind ran near 2.6 GW against roughly 30 GW installed, Hornsea 2 managing 104 MW of 1,386 MW, with gas covering 45% of generation and gas-for-power demand 30 mcm/d higher at 65 mcm/d. Europe began drawing on storage on the 1st of October at 72.67% full, with the UK thinnest in Europe at 32.43% and Ukraine barely a third full after Russia’s heaviest strike on its grid since spring hit Kyiv’s CHPP-5, leaving Kyiv competing for the same gas molecules through winter.
Commodity Price Tables
Electricity (Power) and Gas Price Forward Curves
Power Forward Curve
Gas Forward Curve
Carbon and Oil Prices
Trader Insight
Brent front-month, is trading near $100/bbl this morning against $102.5/bbl last Tuesday, down 2.2%, on a week spanning $96.5 to $107.9. Futures are easing as physical surges is the sharpest signal: dated Brent has averaged close to $129/bbl in October, above April’s $116/bbl peak and the highest in over four years in real terms, with Forties near $144/bbl, dated Brent plus an $18.55 differential, after a strike vote by offshore workers. The G7 is expected to release 100 million barrels from reserves and OPEC+ has held output steady into Nov-26, while Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries keep product cracks supported and Moscow’s export runs constrained. EIA data for the week to the 25th of September showed crude stocks building 0.9 million barrels against an expected draw. Carbon has ignored the gas rally. The EUA Dec-26 contract has eased 2.4% over the week to €83.9/tCO₂ and the UK ETS Dec-26 contract has fallen 2.6% to £60/tCO₂, the wind-driven lift to compliance demand arresting neither and leaving the UK discount unchanged.
Energy market outlook for the week ahead…
The week’s central tension is a futures curve anchored by strategic releases against a physical market clearing at premiums those releases do not touch. Macro attention falls on tomorrow’s FOMC minutes, with US CPI not landing until the 14th of October and the dollar firm on resilient labour data. The bearish case rests on the 100 million barrel G7 release, cargoes arriving into north-west Europe and a wind recovery from Thursday running well above norm into Saturday, offsetting the cooling to around 10.8 degrees. The bullish case rests on stocks 18% below the ten-year average, contracting Hormuz transits, QatarEnergy’s force majeure on Italian deliveries extended into Dec-26 and an energy ceasefire track going nowhere, with Kyiv declaring itself ready and Moscow yet to agree. For UK energy buyers, with the summer-winter inversion removing the case for storing gas into 2027, staggering cover across tranches remains more defensible than committing size against a prompt set to soften.
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FAQ: Understanding the Wholesale Energy Market
What is the wholesale energy market?
The wholesale energy market is the marketplace where electricity and natural gas are traded before being supplied to end users. It is made up of generators, suppliers, traders, large industrial consumers and financial participants buying and selling energy through exchanges and bilateral contracts across multiple time horizons – from same-day delivery through to contracts several years ahead.
Wholesale markets exist to balance supply and demand efficiently while allowing participants to manage price risk. The prices established within these markets ultimately underpin the retail energy costs paid by businesses and consumers.
Why do wholesale energy prices change?
Wholesale energy prices are driven by the constant balancing of supply, demand and market risk. At the most fundamental level, prices rise when the market perceives energy to be less available or more difficult to secure and fall when supply is considered comfortable relative to demand.
A wide range of factors influence this dynamic, including weather conditions, renewable generation output, gas storage levels, infrastructure outages, economic activity and global commodity markets. Prices are also heavily shaped by expectations. Energy markets continuously price in future risks such as geopolitical uncertainty, seasonal demand shifts and potential supply constraints.
Why are winter seasons priced higher than summer seasons?
Winter energy contracts are typically priced at a premium because the market expects higher demand during colder months. Heating requirements increase gas consumption significantly, while electricity demand also rises due to lighting and peak usage pressures.
At the same time, the system often has less operational flexibility during winter. Renewable generation can become more variable, reserve margins tighten, and any disruption to supply has a greater impact on market stability.
What can cause volatility in energy prices?
Energy markets are highly sensitive to both physical disruptions and shifts in market sentiment. Volatility typically occurs when there is uncertainty around the balance between supply and demand, particularly when spare capacity within the system is limited.
Common drivers include extreme weather events, unplanned generation outages, low renewable output, gas infrastructure issues, storage concerns and geopolitical developments. Markets can also react sharply to changes in regulation, macroeconomic data or shifts in global commodity pricing.
Because electricity and gas systems must remain balanced in real time, even relatively small disruptions can trigger disproportionate price movements, particularly in short-term trading markets.
What does seasonal future development mean?
Seasonal future development refers to how wholesale energy prices are expected to evolve across future seasonal delivery periods, typically comparing summer and winter contracts over multiple years ahead.
These seasonal pricing structures reflect the market’s view of future supply and demand fundamentals, infrastructure developments, storage availability, generation mix changes and broader macroeconomic conditions.
Monitoring seasonal market development helps businesses understand how future risk is being priced into the market and supports more informed procurement and budgeting decisions.
What does price forward curves mean?
A forward curve is a graphical representation of wholesale energy prices for future delivery periods, ranging from months to several years ahead. It illustrates how the market currently values future energy supply over time.
Forward curves are one of the most important tools used in energy trading and procurement because they provide insight into market expectations, pricing structure and risk premiums. They are widely used to support budgeting, hedging strategies, contract timing decisions and risk management planning.
Rather than predicting future prices with certainty, forward curves represent the market’s consensus view of value at a specific point in time.
Why are prices generally lower further out?
Energy prices are often lower further out on the forward curve because near-term markets carry greater immediate risk and uncertainty. Short-term pricing is more exposed to factors such as weather events and supply disruptions.
Longer-dated contracts tend to reflect more stable underlying market assumptions, where short-term volatility becomes diluted over time. In effect, the market typically assigns a higher risk premium to prompt and near-term delivery periods because the operational and pricing uncertainty is much more acute.
This is why businesses frequently see higher pricing closer to delivery, particularly during periods of market stress or tight system conditions.
What do ‘commodity’ and ‘non-commodity’ costs mean?
Commodity costs represent the wholesale cost of the underlying gas or electricity being purchased within the energy market. This is the traded market value of the energy itself.
Non-commodity costs are the additional charges applied to deliver and manage energy across the system. These can include network and transmission charges, balancing costs, environmental and policy levies, capacity market costs and supplier operational charges.
Over recent years, non-commodity charges have become an increasingly significant proportion of total business energy costs, meaning effective procurement strategies now require visibility and management across both commodity and non-commodity elements of the bill.