Shares in AIM listed oil and gas firm, Ascent Resources, rose almost 7% today after it cut losses and said a successful drilling campaign in Slovenia would allow it to exploit a "game changing asset".

The exploration firm pared its pre-tax losses from £3.4m in the first six months of 2010 to £2.2m this year. This equates to a loss per share of 0.27p.

It said this was in line with management's expectations and was due to exploration costs, principally in Hungary and Slovenia.

Ascent said that Slovenian gas production was now anticipated in mid-2012 after it successfully raised £17m from UK institutional investors in March, allowing the second phase of the drilling campaign at the Petišovci project to be largely completed.

Managing director Jeremy Eng said considerable progress had been made during the period under review.

"The company's interests are largely geographically spread across on-shore Europe and are therefore well placed to take advantage of the favourable European energy market," he said.

"Recent, short term market volatility has not changed the attractive fundamentals of the European gas market where over 50% of Europe's gas is currently imported, a figure set to rise to nearly 75% by 2030 according to Wood MacKenzie."

"With security of energy supply high on the political and economic agenda in much of Europe, high energy prices look set to support gas exploration and production for the foreseeable future," he added.

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