John W. Pietrowicz
Chief Financial Officer at CME Group
Yeah. Thanks, Michael. Appreciate the question. Following the largest demand shock, we ever saw in the energy market in 2020, followed by the largest supply shock ever '22. We're actually starting to see the global energy market begin to normalize. One of the indicators we're seeing there is financial players are starting to return to this market. One of those clear indicators we're seeing of that this year so far, we're seeing our open interest recover in our WCI complex. We're up about 28%, up to about 1.8 million open interest, since the end of '22. And that's really a function of both margins normalizing, but we're seeing hedge funds asset managers and particularly index trackers come back into the market. They exited largely in the challenging circumstances of last year. Despite the fact that it was a challenging year last year, you look at some of the points that really carry the franchise or carrying over into this year to a degree.
Last year, our options market performed extremely well on the energy side, with energy revenue on the option side, up 9% versus the previous year. Globally, we also saw continued growth outside the U.S. with our LATAM business of energy up 70% last year and our APAC volumes up 15% last year. Finally, we saw continued growth back on the client side, specifically in retail, with our Micro WTI contract in the fourth quarter, TI volumes up 28% to a little over 100,000 contracts, so good global participation and good client segment participation. More importantly, when you think about where the energy markets are going, we continue to see the energy markets revolve and evolve around WTI as the central marketplace and price setter for both physical and financial markets.
A couple of proof points here, number one, the U.S. is now exporting a record level of 4.1 million barrels in Q4. We look to believe that that export capacity will continue to grow. U.S. waterborne crude exports are not equal to Iraq, and the number two slot behind only Saudi Arabia. So U.S. is putting more WTI product out into the global markets. We are also expecting that and the market expects global oil production out of the U.S. to increase about 1 million barrels between now and 2024. So that just increased WTI's footprint globally. So the U.S. exports already up about 40% on '22 versus '21 and exports roughly up double into Asia since 2018, we continue to see exports of U.S. product out into the global market.
So what does that mean, what we are seeing not only is that strong and positions WTI at the central point of price making for the global oil market. But actually, our Argus Gulf Coast grades contract has a combined open interest of about 375,000 contracts. And we just had a record volume about 11,000 contracts this year. So when you think about what that means, you got WTI set in the global price of oil, Brent is not going to be put in the Midland WTI grade into that assessment. That means that continually centralized the WTI there. We have got the largest export market and now production on the upswing. So we like that we have got the strongest position in the export market and in that basis contract, those Argus grades contract, as I said, about 375,000 contracts open interest, 87% of that is commercial participation. That's where customers price discover and WTI, and then they hedge their exposure out to the basis to the Gulf, and then it exports from there.
So we like the position that we are in, in terms of the centrality of WTI. We think we have got the right product mix and we got the client mix and financial players coming back in. So like Terry said, we can't predict what volumes are, but we can talk about the very strong structural position that WTI has in the global oil market going forward.
