Benjamin Jackson: Thanks, Ken. It’s Ben. Great question. And yes, you’re right. You had the same dynamic that I highlighted before on TTF with oil as well as downstream products like gas oil as well, to some degree, getting cut off from Europe. But we have seen a similar dynamic that I mentioned in the natural gas markets where you have U.S., Norway and Middle Eastern oil now flowing in to help address some of that supply that has been lost based on Russia effectively cutting that off. So what we have seen — since we announced in the second half of last year, that Russian molecules were no longer deliverable into the gas oil contract as an example. One of the things that we saw develop underneath the covers is that open interest in gas oil from October 1 to the end of last year grew 100% in deliveries starting in January of this year.
And then since the end of the year, it’s grown another 14%. So all that is showing the underlying health of the return and bolstering of market confidence coming back to products like gas oil, once that specificity was created. That said, you have a whole — so we’re seeing market confidence come back. Brent’s up as well since the beginning of the year. So we feel good about that contract. Our Brent options contract has also done very well. But all of these supply chain changes around the world is why we’ve been making the investments we’ve had in a whole bunch of different areas around oil over the last few years. Two years ago, we’ve announced and launched ICE Futures Abu Dhabi and the Murban contract. And the interesting development we’ve seen with Murban is that Murban historically priced Middle Eastern barrels going out to Asia.
And now, as I mentioned, Middle Eastern oil is also backfilling, to some degree, some of the supply cuts happen from Russia on oil supplies. And we’re seeing Murban now being used to price Middle Eastern barrels that are going into Europe. That’s one of the things that’s feeding north of a 50% growth in Murban year-to-date this year. So we’re off to a great start there. The Midland WTI contract that you highlighted, we launched that contract a year ago. And that contract is off to a great start. Tons of physical traders in it, prices, Midland TI that goes to Houston and hits the water and a lot of that oil is going over to Europe, it’s a perfect product for people to use to hedge cargoes that are going into Europe. And again, with that supply chain dynamic of U.S. oil, backfilling a lot of the Russian oil that was cut off, we were very well positioned there.
And then at the midpoint of this year, that Midland contract is perfectly positioned to be traded in parallel to Brent with those Midland TI barrels coming into the Brent index. So we feel very well positioned with all of the investments we’ve been making in and around oil in anticipation of potential supply chain changes, and we think we’re well positioned there for growth.
Operator: Our next question comes from Chris Allen of Citi. Chris, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
