UK GAS-Prices soar on outages, higher demand

* Thursday's gas demand 8 pct higher than seasonal norm

* Within-day prices rise 24 pct (Updates with new prices, comment)

Sept 15 (Reuters) - British wholesale gas prices soared on Thursday afternoon on expectations of lower supply.

The Within-day contract traded at 26.00 pence per therm at 1542 GMT, up 5.1 p or 24 percent from yesterday's close.

The Day-ahead contract made similar gains, up 5.15 p to 26.45 p/therm.

"Over the last couple of weeks we have seen oversupply in the market but it looks like there will be less supply over the coming days, due to UKCS (UK Continental Shelf) outages and its caused some buying," a gas trader said.

UK Continental Shelf gas production declined as Total (LSE: 524773.L - news) announced an unplanned outage reducing deliveries through the St Fergus terminal by 5 mcm/day.

Traders said a drop in output from the country's wind farms had also led to increased demand for gas from gas-fired power plants.

Thursday's forecast gas demand of 190 million cubic metres (mcm) per day was 8 percent higher than the seasonal norm of 176 mcm, National Grid (LSE: NG.L - news) data showed.

Meanwhile peak output from the country's wind farms was expected at around 1 gigawatt (GW) on Thursday compared with an installed capacity of around 9 GWs.

The Winter 16 contract rose 1.25 pence to 39.25 p/therm.

In the Netherlands, the day-ahead gas price at the TTF hub was up 0.72 euro at 11.65 euros per megawatt-hour.

In the European carbon market, the benchmark Dec (Shanghai: 600875.SS - news) . 16 contract rose 0.18 euro to 4.16 euros a tonne. (Reporting by Oleg Vukmanovic, and Susanna Twidale, editing by Jason Neely and Elaine Hardcastle)