The UK's largest oil firm is expected to warn that leaving the EU could trigger another independence referendum.

Shell executives will also caution that an independent Scotland could struggle to afford the billions of pounds needed to support decommissioning in the crisis-hit North Sea when they meet investors later this week.

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The warning comes just a day after a survey suggested that nearly one in three of the UK’s oil and gas firms is planning further job cuts this year, following a global slump in prices.

Hundreds of posts in Aberdeen have already been axed.

Last month it emerged that the industry was running at a loss to the taxpayer for the first time since records began.

The pumped £24million more into investment and decommissioning than it got back in tax revenues last year.

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Just five years ago the sector contributed £11bn to the Exchequer.

In 2014 Ben van Beurden, Shell's chief executive, said that the oil giant would prefer the UK to remain a "single country".

But he also said that the company would "deal" with independence, if it happened.

That same year he argued that the EU's economic challenges were "best tackled - to the benefit of all - with the UK's voice loudly expressed and loudly heard inside the EU.

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"It's for similar reasons that we'd like to see Scotland remain part of the United Kingdom."

Earlier this year Mr van Beurden was among executives who signed a letter, organised by Downing Street, backing 'Remain'.

A spokesman for Shell said: "Our position has not changed."