UK Chancellor George Osborne abolished the petroleum revenue tax, after cutting it back last year to 35%. In a bid to help the sector and back “the Scottish economy”, he also cut from 20% to 10% the existing supplementary charge for oil companies – with both cuts backdated to 1 January.

Responding to the cuts, Shell’s vice president for upstream in UK & Ireland, Paul Goodfellow, said: “Today’s changes to the tax regime are a step in the right direction to improve the North Sea oil and gas industry’s competitiveness in the current challenging environment.