Angola earned more than $30 billion last year from its petroleum exports.

The Government also revised downward its provisional calculation for the average price Mexican petroleum exports would bring this year.

This stability was partly based on Venezuela's massive foreign exchange earnings gained from petroleum exports.

Last year, for the first time, petroleum exports edged out sugar as Cuba's leading hard currency earner.

So far in 1999, Mexico has earned $1.3 billion more from petroleum exports than budget planners anticipated.

Mexico's estimate of the average annual price of its petroleum exports is a cornerstone of the Government's budget projections.

The rest of its petroleum exports go to Europe and Latin America.

It remains unclear whether producing nations like Mexico, which are heavily reliant on petroleum exports, will succeed in strengthening prices.

The rest would come from a special fund that would compensate Russia for the effect that falling oil prices have had on petroleum exports.

A1 Oil prices fell 6 percent on expectation that Venezuelan petroleum exports would return to normal.