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BAKU – Oil producer club OPEC is set to earn more than $1 trillion from oil exports if crude prices remain above $100/barrel this year, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday, Platts reported.

"IEA analysis indicates that if oil prices stay above $100/b on average for the full year, OPEC oil export revenues are set to exceed $1 trillion in 2011--a record high," the agency said in a statement on its website.

OPEC itself estimated the collective earnings of its members at $1.002 trillion in 2008. This figure plunged by 43% to $575.3 billion in 2009, OPEC said in its most recent annual statistical bulletin, published in July 2010.

The IEA, meanwhile, said that while oil producing countries would benefit, the high prices posed a threat to the fragile global economy.

An average crude price of $100/barrel this year would mean OECD countries paying as much for oil as they did in 2008, when the world was plunged into recession, it said.

An average oil price of $100/b through 2011 would result in OECD oil imports amounting to 2.3% of the region's GDP, with every additional $10/b increase equal to 0.2% of GDP, the IEA said.

"If high prices remain, then the amount spent on oil by the big importing OECD nations will be more or less equal to what they spent in 2008, when the world was plunged into an awful economic crisis," the statement quoted IEA chief economist Fatih Birol as saying.

For China, now the world's second-biggest oil importer after the US, a 2011 average of $100/b would mean an oil import bill of $206 billion, $50 billion more than in 2010, the IEA said.

International crude benchmarks climbed above $100/b early this year as political unrest spread across North Africa and the Middle East, trading at close to $120/b in the latter part of February as violence escalated in Libya.

The OPEC member country had been pumping close to 1.6 million b/d before the unrest but earlier this month National Oil Corp. Chairman Shokri Ghanem said output had dropped below 400,000 b/d.

North Sea Brent crude futures have traded between $115.11/b and $116.78/b so far Thursday, and US light crude futures between $104.12/b and $105.51/b.

Oil prices traded at record highs above $147/b in July 2008 before plunging as the world economic crisis deepened, falling below $40/b by the end of the year.