3522. International Weight Control Standard for the Offshore Oil & Gas Industry

Paper

Abstract

Based on the author’s experience, many engineers and managers in the North American offshore oil and gas industry consider International Standards Organisation (ISO) documents to be incomplete, complicated or foreign.
However, after some understanding behind their purpose and the process of their creation, ISO documents are informative, well written and very useful when tackling complicated technical issues.
With members from 163 countries, ISO is the world’s largest developer and publisher of international standards; encompassing many topics related to the design and manufacturing of goods and facilities in all forms of industry. With the aim of representing interested government and industry bodies with common goals, the countries place volunteer members on specific ISO technical committees. Through consultation, the committee members reach a consensus on how the standards are to be worded and presented for use. Modifications are then presented to the member countries for further peer review. Final changes are voted into acceptance or rejection.
ISO Technical Committee (TC) 67, sub-committee (SC) 7 is responsible for the ISO 19901 suite of documents – entitled Petroleum and natural gas industries – Specific requirements for offshore structures – focusing on the Petroleum and Natural Gas Industries. The complete suite of documents is
composed of:
Part 1: Metocean Design and Operating Considerations;
Part 2: Seismic Design Procedures and Criteria;
Part 3: Topsides Structure;
Part 4: Geotechnical and Foundation Design Considerations;
Part 5: Weight Control During Engineering and Construction;
Part 6: Marine Operations;
Part 7: Station-keeping Systems for Floating Offshore Structures and Mobile Offshore Units;
Working Group 6 (WG6) is responsible for Part 5.
Members of committee TC67/SC7/WG6 include representatives of national standard organizations (governmental and private) from nineteen countries. For North America, the representatives are Mr. A. Schuster representing the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and the author representing the Standard Council of Canada (SCC). SAWE is in the unique position of having both North American representatives as members of its Houston chapter, with both actively employed as weight managers in the offshore oil and gas industry.
This paper is presented to give a better understanding and appreciation of the information found in ISO 19901-5; in order that it receives a more uniform acceptance in the North American oil and gas industry.