UNE-EN ISO 20815:2026

This document describes the concept of production assurance within the assets and operations associated

with exploration drilling, exploitation, processing and transport of petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas

resources. This document covers assets and associated activities for upstream, midstream, downstream and

petrochemical business categories. 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. This

includes a variety of business categories and associated systems/equipment in the oil and gas value chain.

Production assurance addresses not only hydrocarbon production, but also associated activities such as

drilling, pipeline installation and subsea intervention.

This document also supports production assurance and reliability management for lower carbon energy

assets and associated operations, e.g., carbon capture and storage (CCS), hydrogen, ammonia, and wind

energy. This document 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 cost-effective 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, and quality;

planning, execution and implementation of reliability technology;

application of reliability and maintenance data;

reliability-based technology development, design and operational improvement.

The IEC 60300-3 series addresses equipment reliability and maintenance performance in general.

This document designates 12 processes, of which seven are defined as core production assurance processes

and addressed in this document. The remaining five processes are denoted as interacting processes and are

outside the scope of this document. The interaction of the core production assurance processes with these

interacting processes, however, is within the scope of this document as the information flow to and from

these latter processes is required to ensure that production assurance requirements can be fulfilled.

This document specifies how to establish and execute the production assurance programme (PAP) and/or

a reliability management programme (RMP). It is important to reflect the PAP and/or RMP in the overall

project management in the project for which they apply. The PAP is generally used for an entire asset or a

project by an operator. The RMP typically applies for a contractor or a vendor/manufacturer/supplier for

their scope of work in a project. See Annex A for further guidance for preparing PAP and/or RMP.

This document also recommends that the listed processes and activities be initiated only if they can be

considered to add value for the stakeholder (e.g. operator), but the selected process can depend on their

business strategy and application area.