The world’s big oil companies and their investors are bracing for some of the worst quarterly financial results in recent memory as the first three months of the year closed with oil trading at about half of its 2014 peak. The final quarter of 2014 was bad enough. British giant BP PLC announced its biggest quarterly loss since the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Exxon Mobil Corp’s. cash flow fell to its lowest level since the midst of the financial crisis in 2009. The year-end carnage was for a three-month period in which a barrel of oil traded at $77. In the latest quarter, the Brent international oil benchmark averaged $55.13 a barrel. “It’s going to be ugly,” said Jason Gammel, an analyst at Jefferies. “It’s going to be a really bad quarter.” Most of the world’s biggest […]