London, 2 April 2011

Commodities Now: Open Interest in WTI Crude Oil futures (CL), the global crude oil benchmark, continued to show a solid, double-digit increase over the previous year, with growth of 16.9 percent and total open interest at 1,516,018 contracts as of Mar. 28, 2011. Total weekly volume has been robust heading into late March, with an average 3.6 million contracts per week traded over the past four weeks. The WTI Crude Oil Options Complex , meanwhile, attained open interest of 7,442,773 contracts on Mar. 28, 2011, representing a 3 percent increase on the previous year's total. Total weekly volume for the previous four weeks averaged 980,023 contracts.

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