London (Platts)--12Oct2009/646 am EDT/1046 GMT

The US Energy Information Administration has raised its forecast of oil producer group OPEC's export earnings for 2010 by $11 billion but has trimmed its forecast of 2009 revenues by $1 billion.

Using price and production projections from its October Short-Term Energy Outlook, released last Tuesday, the EIA says OPEC's 12 members could earn a combined $558 billion of net oil export revenues this year. The EIA's previous forecast saw OPEC's 2009 earnings at $559 billion.

For 2010, the EIA says OPEC could earn a total $686 billion, $11 billion more than the $675 billion previously forecast.

The agency estimates OPEC's 2008 net export revenues at $971 billion, $43 billion below the $1.01 trillion OPEC itself said it earned last year.

In July last year, the EIA forecast that OPEC could earn $1.25 trillion in 2008 and as much as $1.322 trillion in 2009. At that time, the EIA was expecting the price of US West Texas Intermediate crude to average $127/barrel in 2008 and $133/b in 2009.

After hitting records of more than $147/b in July 2008, however, prices cascaded downward over the subsequent months as the global economic downturn deepened and forecasters slashed their expectations of world oil demand.

Prices have been on a broadly upward trend since mid-February this year.

Last week, the EIA, statistics arm of the US Department of Energy, said it expected the price of WTI to average $72.42/barrel in 2010, unchanged from the previous forecast. For 2009, however, the agency has lowered its price projection to $59.90/b from $60.12/b.

US light crude futures traded at $72.34/b on NYMEX at 1010 GMT Monday.

--Margaret McQuaile, margaret_mcquaile@platts.com