ISO Releases New Edition of Quality Management Spec for Int'l Oil and Gas Industries - ISO/TS 29001

December 24, 2007 // Published as a news service by IHS

ISO/TS 29001:2007 is targeted at ensuring safe and reliable equipment and services throughout the international oil and gas industries by providing these sectors with a requirements document for quality management.

Compared with the first edition published in 2003, ISO/TS 29001:2007 was been expanded to increase its usefulness for organizations that supply services to the sectors, ISO said.

ISO/TS 29001:2007 focuses on the needs of the oil and gas industry, specifically the major petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas organizations, as well as government and regulatory agencies, as the basis for qualification of the quality management systems of equipment manufacturers and service suppliers.

Potential end-users include organizations involved in:

• Exploration, production, pipelines and transportation and refining of petroleum and natural gas products.
• The design, manufacture, installation, service and repair of equipment used in the exploration, production, transportation and refining of petroleum and natural gas products.
• Providing technical, operational and support services to these various industry sectors.

"ISO/TS 29001:2007 is the next step in the evolution of this important sector-specific document. Over the past two years, numerous suggestions were received from various sectors of the petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas sectors," said Ed Durante, leader of the group that developed the new specification.

"These suggestions were evaluated by a dedicated group of experts representing all stakeholders, including end-users, manufacturers and service providers. The result of this effort has resulted in a document that addresses the unique needs of the industry and is poised to gain international acceptance as the quality management system for the industry," he said.

Like its predecessor, the updated specification is the result of cooperation between the American Petroleum Institute (API) and ISO technical committee ISO/TC 67, Materials, equipment and offshore structures for petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas industries.

In conjunction with API and ISO product specifications, it will be used as one of the baseline documents in the API Monogram programme for the qualification of products and services used in the petroleum industry.

Source: International Organization for Standardization (ISO).