Energy Market Briefing

Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed missile and drone strikes on Saudi Aramco infrastructure at Yanbu and other sites on Thursday, days after a barrage that struck near Riyadh for the first time. Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan chiefs of staff were due to meet urgently in Riyadh to coordinate a response under their new mutual-defence pact.

Iran's foreign minister spent three hours with US envoys at the UN, handing over a written plan for a regionwide ceasefire of up to 60 days and a phased reopening of the strait, while a senior security official said Washington has only four to five days to accept the terms.

Iran's president told the General Assembly that Tehran would not bow to pressure, an Israeli walkout followed a sharp Palestinian Authority speech, and Israel's prime minister called the strikes on Iran's nuclear sites one of the easiest decisions of his premiership, leaving the diplomatic backdrop as combustible as the physical one.

UK gas for Win-26 rose 4.5% and power 3.5% at Thursday's close, reversing Wednesday's small pullback as the market repriced Gulf risk. Every season out to Sum-29 firmed on the day, with the front seasons moving hardest.

Brent crude gained a further 3.3% to close above $106.50 a barrel on Thursday, having briefly traded above $108 intraday, extending Wednesday's 3.9% jump and taking the front month up by more than a fifth this month.

European gas (TTF) added a further 2.75% to close near 74 EUR/MWh on Thursday, keeping pace with the UK move and underlining that the driver is regional risk rather than a UK-specific factor.

Shell confirmed the compressor failure that has cut Ormen Lange's output by around 40% since mid-July will not be fixed before 1 February 2027, extending an outage previously expected to end in October and removing roughly 8.9 million cubic metres a day of Norwegian export capacity through the heart of winter.

EU gas storage stood at 70.3% full as of 23 September, up marginally on the day but still 17.3 percentage points below the five-year average for the date, with the extended Norwegian outage making the gap harder to close before the winter target.

The Commission's 90% filling target for 1 December, with flexibility down to 80%, remains achievable on current trends but leaves little margin if a cold snap or a further supply disruption arrives before storage season ends.