Kemi Badenoch has committed the Tories to extract as much oil and gas as possible from the North Sea.
The Conservative Party will make “maximising extraction” its goal if it wins power, rather than measures aimed at shifting the North Sea industry away from fossil fuels.
Mrs Badenoch will use a speech in Aberdeen in the coming days to set out her plans, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
She will announce that the Tories plan to completely overhaul the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which oversees the issuing of licences, dropping the word transition and replacing its current 12-page mandate with a simple order to extract the maximum possible amount of fossil fuels.
Mrs Badenoch said Britain “cannot afford not to be doing everything to get hydrocarbons out the ground” to boost growth.
She said: “We are in the absurd situation where our country is leaving vital resources untapped while neighbours such as Norway extract them from the same seabed.
“Britain has already decarbonised more than every other major economy since 1990, yet we face some of the highest energy prices in the developed world.
“This is not sustainable and it cannot continue. That is why I am calling time on this unilateral act of economic disarmament and Labour’s impossible ideology of net zero by 2050.
“So, a future Conservative government will scrap all mandates for the North Sea beyond maximising extraction.
“It is time that common sense, economic growth and our national interest came first, and only the Conservatives will deliver that.
“We are going to get all our oil and gas out of the North Sea.”
