The UK's Energy Secretary has warned the country will become 'reliant on foreign regimes' if we let the North Sea decline any further.
Without more drilling, output from the North Sea will halve by 2030, leaving the country more reliant on expensive imports.
Claire Coutinho continued to attack Labour's proposals to end any new exploration should they get into power.
Speaking at the annual conference of Energy UK, Ms Coutinho said: "Businesses need certainty. But policies that can’t command public support won’t give you any kind of certainty. We’ve seen that in Europe.
"Shutting down our domestic oil and gas industry – making us reliant on foreign regimes and decimating the same communities, workers and skills that will be needed for clean energy, doesn’t give you certainty."
Number of oil and gas wells continues to drop
The Energy Secretary's comments follow new North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) data that showing should the country's output halve by 2030, the UK will need to import up to 80% of its oil and gas.
That would come at an increased financial and environmental cost.
The NSTA data shows the number of oil and gas wells in UK waters fell by a further 83 in 2022, reducing the total to 1,629.
That's a near 20% decrease since 2019, where there was 2,052.
As many as 938 potentially productive wells have been mothballed, as Britain’s oil production fell to an all-time low of 38m tonnes last year.
'Doesn't need to be a choice'
Speaking at the same event as Ms Coutinho, Shadow Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the UK should move away from oil and gas.
"We just don’t buy the argument that there is a choice to be made between tackling the cost of living crisis on the one hand and tackling the climate crisis on the other. We must do both.
"It’s our dependency on fossil fuels that makes us more insecure and exposed to higher bills for families and businesses."