BP chief executive Meg O'Neill has said the North Sea is no longer competitive for investment, warning that years of tax changes have made it harder to justify spending in UK waters.
The comments come less than a week after BP confirmed it was putting its North Sea business up for sale, ending more than six decades as an operator in the basin.
Speaking to CNBC, Ms O'Neill said: “When we look at how it fits into our portfolio today, it just doesn’t compete for capital.”
She added: “We do still see growth potential in the North Sea – there’s still undeveloped fields there. We would love to see exploration resume in the North Sea.
“But from an investment perspective, dollars spent in the North Sea are just not as competitive as other opportunities.”
Ms O'Neill said she had urged Prime Minister Andy Burnham to improve the investment climate, arguing Britain should prioritise its own energy resources over imports.
She said: “I’ve had a conversation with the Prime Minister where he reinforced his desire to work closely with business, to be pragmatic.
“The message I left him with was: the UK gets 75% of its energy from fossil fuels today, so that’s oil and natural gas. The first barrel of oil we consume and molecule of natural gas we need should be coming from the UK North Sea, where we generate jobs, we generate tax revenue, we generate all those additional positive impacts.”
She added: “We ought to be using our domestic resources first instead of buying those resources from a third party.”
While BP is lobbying for a more competitive fiscal regime, Ms O'Neill said changes would “not going to change our mind” about selling the company's North Sea assets.