Over 40,000 kilometers of pipeline transporting natural gas, oil, and other hazardous liquids have been built from 2001 to 2010 in China. More than 100,000 kilometers pipeline will be constructed from 2011 to 2015. While being considered as an efficient and safe means, many pipelines carry materials with the risk to cause public injury and environmental damage. Pipeline safety and security issues involve with many groups: the government, oil and gas pipeline companies, and local communities. Standards play an important role to ensure these groups working together to achieve common goals. Pipeline operation safety and security mainly rely on the partial or complete incorporation of standards by reference. Standards Development Organizations (SDO) and pipeline companies have done lots of work to make the standards working well in the past ten years. The “standard analysis project” was one of them that were taken to improve pipeline safety and security.
This paper briefly reviews the primary standards which consist of national standards, industry standards and enterprise standards for pipeline operation safety and security. Combined with the technical development and the pipeline operation situation, the standards were analyzed, especially for the differences of technical specifications in the standards. Several aspects are pointed out as the key issues to improve pipeline operation safety and security standards, including pipeline integrity management standards, pipeline Safety Instrumented System standards, standards preventing pipeline from Third Party Damages, standards protecting environment from unexpected oil pollution, and permafrost areas pipeline operation and maintenance standards. In addition to the issues mentioned above, the related legislation situation in China is also taken into consideration. Keeping and improving pipeline safety and security is a task that not only needs the development of supporting standards but the implementation of the standards. According to the analysis results, SDOs will continue improving pipeline safety and security standards by launching relevant standard development projects and encouraging research and development achievements transfer to standards.