THE North Sea oil industry suffered one of the biggest falls in production of all oil-producing nations during 2004, it emerged yesterday.

Figures published by global oil firm BP showed a dip of ten per cent, equating to 228,000 fewer barrels being pumped out per day across the North Sea oil fields.

Only Australia saw a bigger fall in the rate of production, with a drop of 13.9 per cent.

Last autumn, it emerged that the UK had become a net importer of oil for the first time in 13 years.

Paul Horsnell, head of energy research at Barclays Capital, said: "These mature fields in the North Sea are where technology created a success story, technology kept output up through the 90s at a higher plateau level than was expected and for longer than was expected.

"But the kind of downside to that is that as a consequence of technology having kept things going much longer than was anticipated, once they started to decline they've been declining much quicker."

The data from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy showed the number of barrels produced per day by the UK fell from 2,257,000 in 2003 to 2,029,000 in 2004.