Brent crude off 48 percent for the year, worst drubbing since ’08

Hey, did you hear oil prices fell in 2014?

Now that the year in oil trading is officially over, traders are counting the damage, and it’s like monitoring the progress of a boulder rolling down a mountain:

Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell another 57 cents Wednesday to close the calendar at $57.33 a barrel. Brent, as well as gasoline futures, fell 48 percent during the course of the year, making them the worst-performing commodities among the 22 markets tracked by the Bloomberg Commodity Index.

U.S. oil futures were off 85 cents Wednesday, to $53.27, and were down 46 percent for the year.

Read more in The Wall Street Journal.

The report said the oil, gasoline and diesel markets posted their worst annual losses since 2008, the year markets plunged because of the financial crisis.

Oil, gasoline and diesel markets all posted their largest annual losses since the global recession in 2008.

Wednesday’s price drop marked a “poetic end to…what ended up being a difficult year for the oil and gas industry,” said Adam Wise, managing director at John Hancock Financial Services, who helps oversee about $7 billion in energy-related investments.