Asia report: Australian energy stocks put spring in region's step

Australia led a region-wide rise in Asia on Thursday, with stocks in the country closing at their highest level in more than a fortnight, egged on by creeping oil prices.

The S&P/ASX 200 finished up 2.25% at 4,992, crawling ever closer to the psychological landmark 5,000. It followed the pattern set so far this week of markets tracking movements in the volatile oil price environment, with prices rising during the Asian trading day.

Those rises came after indications from Iran that it was supportive of the production freeze proposed by four major producers - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Venezuela and Russia. Brent crude was last up 3.23% at $35.32 per barrel, and West Texas Intermediate up 3.04% to $31.62.

"It almost feels like we could be seeing the start of fear-of-missing-out trading. There is certainly an eye on 5,000," said IG Melbourne-based strategist Chris Weston.

The basket of energy stocks on the Sydney benchmark leapt 5.3% on Thursday, taking their total gains for the week to 9.1%. Woodside Petroleum added 4.58% while Oil Search grew 4.68%. Santos added 7.6%, with investors eagerly awaiting its 2015 results on Friday.

Origin Energy rocketed 8.74% after revealing a wider first-half loss, though it committed to bring its debt under control.

Elsewhere, the Nikkei Stock Average rose 2.28% to 16,196.80, which kept it on the rebound after last week's global selloff, which hurt Japanese financial stocks particularly hard. Banks on Tokyo's Topix index were up 12% in the week so far.

Seoul's Kospi continued its rally, rising 1.32%.

China slumped, however, with the Shanghai Composite losing 0.16% after making some good gains early in the session. It was the latest afternoon slip-up for the market this year, which had seen similar days in which local traders cashed out their gains late in the day, fearing volatility.

The earlier rise in the People's Republic came off the back of higher consumer inflation figures for January, which were released by Beijing in the morning. China's consumer price index rose 1.8% year-over-year in January, ahead of the 1.6% reported in December.

In New Zealand, the S&P/NZX 50 gained 0.4%, after Steel & Tube reported a 47% surge first-half profit, cashing in on property sales amid low steel prices. Shares in the company were up 7.9%.

On the currencies front, the yen edged even closer to the dollar, gaining 0.11% to JPY 113.97 per USD.

Down under, the Aussie slipped back 0.27% from its American cousin, to AUD 1.3956, but the Kiwi inched ahead by 0.12% to NZD 1.5056 against the greenback.

The Indonesian rupiah was up 0.4% to 13,445 per USD, after the country's central bank cut its overnight benchmark interest rate to 0.25%, to 7%, late in the trading day.