Former Just Stop Oil donor Dale Vince has now called on the UK Government to "put its arms around the North Sea" to slow its decline.
In a surprise intervention this morning, Mr Vince - who is also a financial donor to Labour - urged Ed Miliband to consider government subsidies for oil and gas producers, warning that failure to support the sector will deepen its decline.
The Ecotricity founder said fossil fuel operators should be offered contracts for difference - the same mechanism that underpins renewables - guaranteeing a minimum price per barrel of oil and gas.
He told the Telegraph: “It’s time for Labour to put its arms around the North Sea. Putting fossil fuels on an equal footing with renewables by giving them a stable price is the key to a just transition.
“Contracts for difference helped make wind and solar our fastest-growing energy sources. Why wouldn’t we use the same tool for fossil fuels?
“Our North Sea is in decline, let’s protect it during the transition and optimise our use of the resources that are left.”
Mr Vince said a subsidy scheme would put an end to the “increasingly toxic” political debate over the future of the North Sea.
“We should scrap the windfall tax and protect the industry and its workers – we need to avoid the destruction of the industry or we will see a repeat of what happened to our coal miners,” he said.
It comes amid growing pressure on Mr Miliband to reverse his ban on new licences in the North Sea instead of relying on costly foreign imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Last week Greg Jackson, the chief executive of Octopus, Britain’s biggest energy provider, backed calls to restart drilling in the North Sea. It came after Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, pledged to extract as much oil and gas from the basin as possible.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero insisted its focus remains on managing decline while investing in “industries of the future” such as carbon capture and hydrogen.