Investment in U.K. North Sea oil and gas projects could drop as much as 80 percent by 2017 as the collapse in oil prices forces the industry to cut back. Capital investment across the industry of 14.8 billion pounds ($22.8 billion) last year will probably decline by 2 billion to 4 billion pounds annually to 2017, Oil & Gas U.K., an industry lobby group, said in its annual economic report Wednesday. “This great industry of ours is facing very challenging times,” Deirdre Michie, Oil & Gas U.K.’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “Exploration for new resources has fallen to its lowest level since the 1970s” and few new projects are gaining approval from “hard-pressed” companies, she said. The decline in crude prices of more than 50 percent over the past year has forced the oil industry to review projects and reduce operating costs. The U.K. North Sea […]