Oil and gas companies have reached an agreement with the government to increase drilling in the North Sea to make the Netherlands less dependent on imported gas.

Green growth minister Sophie Hermans signed a deal in Scheveningen on Wednesday to exploit the 200 billion cubic metres of gas under the sea and in small-scale inland gas fields, which account for around 25% of the total.

Offshore gas production has fallen from 39 billion to 8.8 billion cubic metres a year in the last two decades, as Dutch governments hoped the country could move to becoming gas-free after the shutdown of the Groningen gas field.

But with 90% of households still relying on natural gas for heating, the government now says the country will need to maintain supplies until at last 2045.

Energy producer Energiebeheer Nederland (EBN) will increase its share in Dutch. oil and gas production from 40% to as much as 85% under the new deal, with a condition that it will not produce more than 30 billion cubic metres a year.

That figure would be enough to meet annual domestic demand, 60% of which is currently supplied from abroad.

The Netherlands imports 14% of its gas from Norway and 27% from the United States in the form of liquefied gas (LNG). The government wants to buy less gas from Russia and the Middle East and reduce LNG imports from the US, which contain higher levels of methane.