ISO Standards: Value?

Abstract

Abstract ISO has been working to develop standards for the oil and gas industry for almost 10 years. With the recent events in the oil industry including the low oil prices of the recent past coupled with the consolidation of companies and role of national oil companies, the question of value is often asked. This paper will discuss many of the issues surrounding development and use of standards in light of the recent events. It will draw upon the past, trends eminating from observation and draw conclusions as to value eminating from the ISO offshore standards efforts. Introduction Oil field standards started to appear in the early stages of the 20th century. Prior to standards in the early days, products serving the same function were not interchangeable often leading to costly and sometimes unsafe solutions for repairs and/or extensions, as well as additional costs. The American Petroleum Institute (API) started to address standardization of various aspects of the industry with a policty statement that read in part: "API standardization activities identify and support proven, sound engineering and operating practices, ans safe interchangeable equipment and materials, for use in the petroleum industry..." Until the 1970's, the API standards were generally the defacto standards utilized in various parts of the world. With the advent of the North Sea activities in the seventies, additional standards generated within various regions started to appear. This tendency of regional standards continued through the 1980's. With the formal joining of European Union in sight, some industry leaders started the process of reactivating a dormant international standards committee, ISO TC 67, in 1989. Concurrently, the oil industry was starting to undergo a transformation to a more global industry where many of the historically regional focused companies were becoming more and more global. A third change factor was the continued emegence of new oil producing contries as key participants in the oil industry at large. The offshore standards parallel the overall standards with the key exception that it was the 1960's before the offshore industry had standards covering the key areas. As the offshore arena rapidly expanded in the late 1960's and 1970's, offshore standards garnered significant attention and many were initiated with many more expanded and extended as the knowledge increased. The offshore industry, for the most part, has been a selfregulating industry. One of the biggest challenges facing the industry will be to what extent it will continue to be predominantly self-regulating. Development of standards that meet the needs of the industry at large, all of the stakeholders, is the principle means in achieving that objective. One of the most common questions around standards has been, "What value does an ISO standard bring?" A oft heard corollary is "The existing standards are fine so what's in it for me?" This paper will be focused on offshore facilities standards. To varying degrees, other sets of oil field standards can be viewed as being parallel.