Oil & Gas

Hostile environments may be familiar territory for the oil and gas industry. However, operators and contracts also have to navigate escalating input costs, supply chain disruption and turbocharged programmes along with the sector’s sharp cyclical swings.

For contractors, incomplete FEED (front end engineering) designs and site investigations compound the unbalanced risk distribution on projects. Meanwhile, clients, consultants and contractors alike struggle as the industry loses expertise to retirement and young talent to other sectors, not least renewables.

HKA is one of the world’s most experienced providers of consulting, expert and advisory services to the resources sector. For more than four decades, our specialists have been supporting clients on their complex and challenging projects in oil and gas.

How we help

As well as advising clients how to anticipate risks and conflicts, our specialists investigate and resolve claims and disputes, helping to minimise their impact and to achieve fair and equitable settlements. Over five years, we have handled contractual conflicts costed at more than $21 billion.

We decode the complex web of causation on distressed projects, and share the lessons from that experience and our in-house CRUX research programme. More than 240 resources projects worldwide were analysed for the Fifth Annual CRUX Insight Report. Their combined capital expenditure value was $1.2 trillion, and the impact of claims and disputes was hugely significant. Extensions of time sought by contractors would add almost two thirds (63.5%) to the average schedule, while disputed costs exceeded 40% of a typical project’s committed capital expenditure.

Much of this colossal toll on oil and gas projects can be reduced if not avoided through expert intervention.

Why HKA?

Our multi-disciplinary teams put these insights to good use on behalf of our clients. Wherever in the world, they draw on expertise in contract and construction law, delay and quantum analysis, quantity surveying, forensic accounting, and engineering specialisms from process and structures to geology and metallurgy.

We work with owners and employers, international contractors, specialist subcontractors, and international law firms, applying our knowledge and unrivalled expertise to achieve the best outcomes possible for our clients.

HKA’s track record spans pioneering developments and many high-profile projects, such as the Jaxan Refinery and Terminal in Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan’s Kashagan oil field development in the northern Caspian Sea, the Swinoujscie LNG terminal in Poland, and the Gorgon LNG Plant on Barrow Island off the north-west coast of Western Australia.

Our project experience includes: