WASHINGTON, United States (Reuters):

The United States government's top energy forecaster yesterday said it raised its estimate for world crude prices in 2010 by about 20 per cent to near US$60 a barrel due to delays bringing new oil fields on line.

African producers like Angola and Nigeria and Latin American states like Brazil will be slower than initially projected in ramping up production from new projects, putting a squeeze on world supply, said Guy Caruso, administrator of the Energy Information Administration ( EIA).

"It's clearly going to take longer now to bring on the new supplies and to have an impact on price than we were thinking a year ago," Caruso told reporters.

World crude oil prices are projected to average US$57.47 a barrel in 2010 based on 2005 dollars, versus a year-ago estimate of US$47.29 a barrel in 2004 dollars, the EIA said.

"The front end of the curve is now much higher than we were thinking a year ago," Caruso said. "We were too ... optimistic of how fast the price would go down" due to new projects coming online," he said.

U.S. crude oil futures have hovered around US$60 a barrel in recent weeks, down from the record US$78.40 hit in July.

World crude prices will dip to US$49.87 a barrel in 2015, and then rise steadily to average US$59.12 in 2030, the EIA said. That's versus the US$56.97 a barrel average for 2030 that the EIA predicted last year.

Meanwhile, OPEC producers are expected to grab a slightly smaller share of the global oil market by the end of the decade than previously forecast as supplies from the Caspian Sea increase, the EIA said in its annual energy outlook.

OPEC members will pump 34.72 million bpd in 2010, the EIA said, versus its year-ago projection of 36.67 million bpd. The EIA shaved OPEC's 2010 market share to 38.1 per cent versus last year's estimate of 40 per cent.

Non-OPEC producers will pump 56.34 million bpd in 2010, versus year-ago projections of 54.33 million bpd, the EIA said.

But OPEC will regain its losses by 2030 with a 40.6 per cent share of the global oil market, which will average 117.33 million barrels per day in 2030, the EIA said.