Petrochem/Utilities Industry Trends

The Importance of Gosstandart: Q&A with Steen Andersen

Issue Table of Contents

The Changing Face of Russia’s Oil Industry The Importance of Gosstandart: Q&A with Steen Andersen The Evolution of GOST Standards Gosstandart of Russia (GOST) Related Standards and Publications

In June, IHS signed an unprecedented agreement with Interstandard for the worldwide subscription rights to distribute the official English translation of Gosstandart of Russia’s (GOST) standards. Steen Andersen, sales and marketing director for IHS Nordic, explains why GOST standards are becoming so important to Western oil companies.

Q: What is Gosstandart?
Gosstandart is the national standardization body of Russia. Its status within Russia is almost like a ministry. It’s a very official body. And since it is a state body, it cannot undertake commercial activities. This is the reason for the formation of Interstandard, which is wholly owned by Gosstandart. It’s not a state body, so Interstandard is capable of acting commercially.

Q: Interstandard was formed to help with commercial activities in Russia?
Exactly. So Gosstandart of Russia has granted Interstandard all the rights to GOST documents.

Q: Does Interstandard provide standards for more than just petrochemical companies?
Absolutely. The complete GOST collection is approximately 22,000 documents, covering all aspects of standardization within Russia.

Q. Are the standards available in English and Russian?
The 22,000 standards are in Russian. Only a fraction of these standards have been available in English until now.

Q: Will IHS be helping with the translation process?
No. We will commission translations on behalf of customers, but the translations will be undertaken by Interstandard. The reason for this is that in order for the company to trust the content of a standard in English it would need Interstandard to approve the English text.

Q: Why is Interstandard important to petrochemical companies outside Russia?
Anybody who wants to work within Russia in the petrochemical industry will need to comply with Russian laws and regulations. And Gosstandart is a vital part of what companies will need to comply with.

As in any other country — this is not something that is unique to Russia — there are a number of other organizations that a petrochemical company will need documents from in order to ensure compliance. In some areas in Russia there are documents that we do not have the rights to. But you will find that most of the technical aspects are covered by the GOST standards. That is the reason why they need to comply with these standards in order to comply with Russian laws.

Q: Before IHS distributed these regulations, how were companies getting hold of them? Just by working directly with Interstandard?
Most likely. There haven’t been that many companies outside Russia who did anything with the petrochemical industry in Russia until a couple years ago. It’s been a fairly restricted area and before when it was still a communist country, there was absolutely no way that Western companies could operate within Russia. So it’s something that has happened within the past five years or so.

Q: Russia has huge oil reserves, so there is a lot of interest, right?
That is correct. And the interest is increasing dramatically. As soon as Russia emerged as the Soviet Union collapsed, a number of suppliers to the petrochemical industry went into Russia in order to help the Russian industry get back on its feet. So Western technology has been there already for quite a long time. But companies obtaining operator licenses is something that is very new.

As far as I’ve seen, up until now most such activities have been on the peninsula called Sakhalin, which is situated just above Japan. The area is very rich in oil and there are several huge projects there with Western operators. But within the mainland of Russia, there is very little activity with Western companies as operators. They are there as partners, but not as operators.

Q: Do you think that will be changing?
Yes, it’s already changing. Since only this spring, British Petroleum merged with one of the really big players in the Russian oil industry called TNK. And together they are huge. So they are present already, and I know for a fact that several companies are looking for opportunities with Russia now.

Q: So these companies will need GOST standards to operate there?
Yes. And until very recently, it’s been difficult for companies to get these standards and it’s been quite bothersome to keep track of the revisions and the status of the standards and so on, not only for the GOST standards but also for documents from other organizations vital to the petrochemical industry.

I think IHS is fulfilling a very important role by not only making these documents available but by acting as a focal point for many of our customers who rely on the information they get from us. This is actually a relief to a number of these major oil organizations because they used to employ people to try to keep track of all the standards and the changes, but now they can just order the standards from us and get them exactly the same way as they get other standards.