Project Management in the Oil and Gas Industry

1.1 The Principal of Project Management
The subject of project management has become one of the most common 
themes in the recent past, and that is due to the increase in the number of 
mega projects worldwide and the development of modern technology in 
all areas of knowledge, which requires new methods of project manage-
ment to cope with fast-pace developing.
Oil and gas companies are clear examples of the difference between the 
concept of a project and daily routine operations. These companies, in 
most cases, have an operations department and project department and 
they should work together.
Therefore, project management is different from the daily activity in 
operation management. Thus, most books and references that discuss 
project management define a project as a number of tasks and duties to be 
implemented during a specific period of time in order to achieve a specific 
objective or set of specific targets.
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How to Manage Oil and
Gas Projects

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2 
Project Management in the Oil and Gas Industry
In operation management, production managers focus on the daily oil 
or gas production compared to the previous day. Oil and gas production 
is measured by the number of oil barrels produced per day (BOPD) in 
millions of standard cubic feet of gas (MMSCF). So, the monitoring of 
production daily is very important to the present income of the company.
On the other hand, the definition of project management can be summed 
up as planning, organization, recruitment, direction, and controlling of all 
kinds of resources in a certain period of time in order to achieve a specific 
objective for financial and non-financial targets.
To clarify the difference between project management and operations 
management, we should consider what goes on in the mind of these two 
managers. The project manager’s goal is to finish the project on time. Then 
they evaluate where they will relocate after finishing the project. This is 
very different from the thinking of the operations manager, who never 
wants daily production to stop. So, they could not dream of work stop-
ping, which is contrary to the project manager’s target. Therefore, you can 
imagine the difference between the thinking of the two managers.
The first difference in the definition of project management is the goal to 
finish the project in a certain amount of time and its set of objectives all at 
once. While some measures are applicable for both operation and project 
management, the use of budget and manpower puts an end to specific 
actions.