"The North Sea is the second-largest oil-producing region in the world after Saudi Arabia. It's a national treasure for the UK. The government is utterly destroying that," he told The Daily Telegraph. "I wish people would step up and say you just can't do this. You're killing the industry. Capital is leaving the country and going elsewhere. The politicians seem to be ignorant of the facts and then they do something stupid as a political mechanism to offset a fuel tax. It's a critical time in the future of the North Sea and some of these reserves are going to be lost forever. They need to eat some humble pie and say they made a mistake."