By: Enas Bahgat

Abu Dhabi - Mubasher: The stock of Dana Gas saw a strong performance this weak, leading analysts to expect it will maintain the upwards trend, breaking resistance levels and reaching new highs.

The stock surged 2.7% on Thursday reaching AED 1.14 after rising for five consecutive sessions since the beginning of the week.

The banks sector led the trading activities in the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) with 29.88 million traded shares at a total turnover of AED 33.63 million, through 244 transactions.

The energy sector was the top gainer by the end of the last session this week, rising by 2.4% on the back of Dana’s gains.

The stock currently targets resistance at the level of AED 1.15, said technical analyst Gamal Abdelhamed, who is forecasting it to reach AED 1.2 on the short term.

The company’s CEO Patrick Allman-Ward recently said that cash flows stand at AED 2.4 billion ($636 million), and that the company’s debt ratio was low and did not exceed 0.3%, noting that the agreement with sukukholders will cut financing cost, which in return positively impacts the company’s financial results by the end of the year.

The CEO said that Dana Gas’ average production amounted to around 65,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), projecting it would increase to 70,000 boepd by the end of this year, helped by the company’s projects in Egypt and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

The company’s average production at Al Zawra gas field totalled 1,400 boepd in the first quarter of 2018.

The UAE-based energy producer is currently working on executing additional plans to boost production of Pearl Petroleum in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq by 170% by 2021, which will raise total daily production capacity of Khor Mor field by 580 million cubic feet of gas.