North Sea oil and gas firms were left reeling on Budget day after getting a double-dose of bad news that will increase fears of hefty job losses in Aberdeen

The Chancellor dealt a hammer blow to oil and gas firms on the tax front on Budget Day even as the importance of the industry to the UK was made painfully clear by regulators.

All the same, claims that companies were hard done by will win little, if any, sympathy outside places like Aberdeen.

Rachel Reeves caused consternation on Wednesday when she delivered a Budget speech that did not include any concessions to the North Sea oil and gas industry, which she hit with a rise in the windfall tax in November last year.

The speech followed a series of warnings from industry leaders that if Ms Reeves did not give ground firms would slash investment in the North Sea, with devastating consequences for jobs.

Offshore Energies UK highlighted claims that job losses were already running at 1,000 a month before the Budget.

The trade body reacted furiously to Ms Reeves’s speech.

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Chief executive David Whitehouse warned the decision would mean the UK lost out on £50 billion investment that tax changes could have unlocked.

He said tens of thousands of jobs would be lost amid the resulting “contagion across supply chains and our industrial heartlands”.

In Aberdeen the reaction was even stronger.

The chief executive of the local chamber of commerce, Russell Borthwick, went so far as to claim that the Budget had sentenced the oil and gas industry to death.

“Without so much as a mention in the Chancellor’s statement today, the

© Herald Scotland