London, 18 March 2011

WTI Crude Oil futures (CL), the global crude oil benchmark, has seen a string of record-breaking highs, with open interest reaching 1,605,830 contracts on Mar. 11, 2011 to displace the previous record of 1,596,178 contracts set the day before, which overtook the open interest record of 1,585,044 contracts reached the prior day.

The latest high represents a 17 percent increase on the previous year. Total weekly volume held strong into mid-March, with an average 4.36 million contracts over the past four weeks.

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