Why major oil and gas projects go wrong

The underlying causes of disruptions and disputes could be moderated by improving contracts, audits and controls

Oil and gas projects are complex, usually large-scale and involve integrating complicated supply chains and diverse technologies. But this complexity does not explain the delays, disruption, defects, lost productivity and higher costs that afflict so many of these construction and engineering projects. Within the world’s largest database of real-life claims and disputes, HKA analysed 114 oil and gas projects with a capex value of US$603.7 billion from the last two years to identify and rank the underlying causes (see table). The findings from HKA’s CRUX Insight 2019 Global Market Sector Analysis found change in scope to be the dominant causation factor in this and the other five sectors surv