This article is devoted to the development of a standard model of the life cycle of a knowledge-intensive project at oil and gas enterprises in order to obtain accurate forecasts of project deadlines. The relevance of the work lies in improving the accuracy of the forecast models used by oil and gas enterprises in project management and the corresponding increase in competitive advantages by reducing the risks of project deadline failures. The study analyzed the main stages of the life cycle of knowledge-intensive projects and the specifics of each stage. To develop a standard model, a system-dynamic approach was chosen to visualize cause-and-effect relationships between the variables of the system state and to describe these relationships in the form of structured functional dependencies. The results of the study present a standard system-dynamic model of the life cycle of a knowledge-intensive project in the oil and gas industry, containing the main stages of project implementation from the process of requirements analysis to the implementation and support of project results. The stages of passing the audit review are reflected in the model as auxiliary processes. The model can be used to estimate the project execution time depending on the established values of the influencing parameters at the enterprise under study, for the purpose of making management decisions in project management. The prospects of the study are the introduction of an accounting of the occurrence of investment risks into the model, as well as the possibility of a quantitative assessment of their occurrence.