Following a recent trip to the Kurdistan region of Iraq, analysts at UBS have shown their confidence and have upped their target prices for oil and gas groups Afren and Heritage Oil who are both heavily exposed to region.

The broker says that both Afren and Heritage Oil have "material exposure" to Kurdistan with 38% of risked net asset value (NAV) for Afren, and 33% for Heritage.

Sector peer Genel Energy recently hosted an analyst trip to Kurdistan where they met with management and a number of political figures including the natural resources minister of the Kurdish regional government.

"Because of improved confidence around the positive momentum in political negotiations as a result of the Genel visit, we are reducing the risk factor we use to discount our NAV for political risk to 40% from 50%," the broker said.

As such, UBS raises its price target for Afren (rated a buy) from 135p to 140p and for Heritage (neural) from 180p to 190p.

BC

Related share prices
Afren (AFR) share price
Heritage Oil (HOIL) share price