This International Standard introduces the concept of production assurance within the systems and operations
associated with exploration drilling, exploitation, processing and transport of petroleum, petrochemical and
natural gas resources. This International Standard covers upstream (including subsea), midstream and
downstream facilities and activities. It focuses on production assurance of oil and gas production, processing
and associated activities and covers the analysis of reliability and maintenance of the components.
It provides processes and activities, requirements and guidelines for systematic management, effective
planning, execution and use of production assurance and reliability technology. This is to achieve costeffective
solutions over the life cycle of an asset-development project structured around the following main
elements:
¿ production-assurance management for optimum economy of the facility through all of its life-cycle phases,
while also considering constraints arising from health, safety, environment, quality and human factors;
¿ planning, execution and implementation of reliability technology;
¿ application of reliability and maintenance data;
¿ reliability-based design and operation improvement.
For standards on equipment reliability and maintenance performance in general, see the IEC 60300-3 series.
This International Standard designates 12 processes, of which seven are defined as core productionassurance
processes and addressed in this International Standard. The remaining five processes are denoted
as interacting processes and are outside the scope of this International Standard. The interaction of the core
production-assurance processes with these interacting processes, however, is within the scope of this
International Standard as the information flow to and from these latter processes is required to ensure that
production-assurance requirements can be fulfilled.
This International Standard recommends that the listed processes and activities be initiated only if they can be
considered to add value.
The only requirements mandated by this International Standard are the establishment and execution of the
production-assurance programme (PAP).