KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 25): Bursa Malaysia's Energy Index gained slightly over 3% or 29.72 points to 993.24 points at 11:41am today amid weakness in other indices.

According to Bloomberg data, the main driver behind the Energy Index today was Petra Energy Bhd, which hit its limit up of 71% or 30 sen at 72 sen this morning.

This was followed by Dayang Enterprise Holdings Bhd, which gained 22.5 sen or 28.3% to RM1.02 at 11:41am, and it was also the most active counter, with 104.24 million shares traded.

Both Petra Energy and Dayang Enterprise released their quarterly earnings report last Friday (Feb 22), which saw them reporting net profit compared to net loss a year ago.

Other gainers under the Energy Index included Scomi Group Bhd (up one sen or 12.5%), Perdana Petroleum Bhd (up three sen or 12.1%), Barakah Offshore Petroleum Bhd (up one sen or 10%), Uzma Bhd (up seven sen or 7.78%) and Deleum Bhd (up eight sen or 6.84%).

It is also worth noting that crude oil prices have been rising steadily of late, Bloomberg data shows that Brent crude climbed 1.31% week-on-week to US$67.12 (RM273.21) per barrel last Friday (Feb 22), from US$66.25 per barrel on Feb 15.

At press time, the commodity pared some gain to trade at US$66.88 per barrel.

Meanwhile, the laggers under the Bursa Energy Index today included Carimin Petroleum Bhd (down three sen or 3.7%), Petron Malaysia Refining & Marketing Bhd (down 19 sen or 2.76%), Hengyuan Refining Co Bhd (down 12 sen or 1.99%) and Hibiscus Petroleum Bhd (down one sen or 0.94%).