Project Scope Management and Robustness of Oil and Gas Producing Companies in Rivers State

The oil and gas producing companies of Rivers State operate within an exceptionally turbulent environment, yet many have proved unable to withstand the price shocks, regulatory upheaval, insecurity and community disruption that pervade the Niger Delta. This study examined the relationship between project scope management and the robustness of oil and gas producing companies in Rivers State, with project scope management operationalised through four dimensions, namely scope planning, requirements collection, work breakdown structure, and scope validation and control, while robustness was modelled as a single criterion construct. Anchored on the Contingency Theory and the Dynamic Capabilities Theory, the study adopted a positivist philosophy and a cross-sectional survey design. Primary data were gathered from 180 management staff of thirty-three oil and gas producing firms registered with the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, drawn by simple random sampling from an accessible population of 480, using a structured 5-point Likert’s scale questionnaire. The hypotheses were tested at the 0.05 level of significance using Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling via SmartPLS. Only the work breakdown structure had a strong, positive and significant relationship with robustness, whereas scope planning, requirements collection and scope validation and control recorded weak-to-negligible, positive and non-significant relationships; the four dimensions jointly explained 65.7% of the variance in robustness. The study concludes that the robustness-enhancing potency of scope management is concentrated in its decompositional, execution-oriented dimension, and recommends the institutionalisation of rigorous, deliverable-based work breakdown structures, while the other dimensions require contextual adaptation to the volatile Niger Delta environment.