Energy Market Briefing

Qatari mediators are trying to win US and Iranian backing for a draft deal that could restart direct talks within days, built around a three-day sequence of confidence-building steps (Gulf News, 5 November). No meeting is scheduled and nothing has been agreed, although Vice President Vance has reportedly reached out to an Iranian official about ceasefire terms.

Iran says it will reopen the Strait of Hormuz only once the US ends its naval blockade, gives sanctions relief and releases frozen funds. President Trump says the US has no immediate plans to strike Iran but is still weighing strikes, a deal or continued pressure, and US officials say the military is finishing preparations in case major combat resumes (Gulf News, 5 November).

Iran's Revolutionary Guard says two tankers and a tugboat caught fire on Thursday after vessels used unauthorised routes, with one tanker reportedly hitting a mine. Separately the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency reported a tanker struck by two projectiles off Qatar. These reports come from the parties involved and are not independently confirmed.

Brent was about $93.63 a barrel on Thursday morning, its lowest in roughly two months, after falling nearly 8% on Wednesday (Gulf News, 5 November). The LSEG close shows Brent at 94.62 $/bbl on 4 November against 103.60 the day before, and TTF at 88.34 EUR/MWh against 92.11.

Deal hopes are taking the war premium out of oil and gas, but the same hopes have faded before. Tanker losses and Tehran's rejection of claims that a deal was close reversed the previous sell-off (Prestige Business Solutions, 4 November), so prices can move back quickly if talks stall.

UK gas fell across the curve at the 4 November close. Sum-27 settled at 5.27 p/kWh, down 4.7%, Win-27 at 5.06 p/kWh, down 4.1%, and Sum-28 at 3.07 p/kWh, down 5.7%.

UK power eased by less. Sum-27 settled at 12.12 p/kWh, down 3.2%, Win-27 at 12.00 p/kWh, down 3.8%, and Sum-28 at 7.72 p/kWh, down 3.6%.

On Tuesday 3 November UK NBP day-ahead settled at 7.64 p/kWh, down 0.24 p/kWh, and UK power day-ahead baseload at 20.50 p/kWh, down 0.32 p/kWh (Prestige Business Solutions, 4 November). The same report put the intraday power system price between about 15.6 p/kWh overnight and 34.9 p/kWh in the evening ramp.

UK gas for Sum-27 is priced above Win-27 at the 4 November close, 5.27 against 5.06 p/kWh. Prestige reads that summer premium as the market expecting difficulty refilling storage next year.

TTF closed at 88.34 EUR/MWh on 4 November, down 4.1%. EU gas storage was 74.1% full on 3 November, against a five-year norm of 91.4%, and had fallen about 10.3 TWh in seven days from a recent peak of 75.0% on 27 October.

Norwegian exit nominations recovered to 332.1 mcm a day and curtailments eased to 17.8 mcm a day as unplanned Troll work and extended Oseberg maintenance tapered off. Flows to the UK were about 98 mcm a day (Prestige Business Solutions, 4 November).

South Hook, Dragon and Isle of Grain together sent out just under 50 mcm a day, and ten cargoes were due into north-west Europe by 9 November. US Freeport feedgas has not recovered from its late-October drop (Prestige Business Solutions, 4 November).

At 09:40 GMT on 5 November demand was 36.29 GW. Gas supplied 16.20 GW (44.7%), wind 9.79 GW (27.0%), nuclear 3.67 GW (10.1%) and biomass 3.29 GW (9.1%), with interconnectors a small net import of about 0.5 GW (GridWatch).

Around 1 GW of UK nuclear capacity is offline. Heysham 1-1 began a 65-day planned outage on Tuesday and Torness 2 is due off from 27 November. EDF industrial action was due to begin on the evening of 4 November, and we have not confirmed its effect (Prestige Business Solutions, 4 November).