NORSOK standards

The NORSOK standards are developed by the Norwegian petroleum industry to ensure adequate safety, value adding and cost effectiveness for petroleum industry developments and operations. Furthermore, NORSOK standards are as far as possible intended to replace oil company specifications and serve as references in the authorities regulations.

There are forty years of petroleum experience from the Norwegian continental shelf behind the NORSOK standards. The acronym NORSOK originally stands for "the Norwegian shelf’s competitive position" and was introduced in 1994 to cut costs and improve competitiveness on the Norwegian continental shelf.

Standards Norway has signed an agreement with the owners, the Federation of Norwegian Industries, Offshore Norge (formerly the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association) and Norwegian Shipowners´ Association, for the management of the NORSOK standards.

Development and maintenance of NORSOK standards

NORSOK A-001:2021 is a directive that provides the procedures and rules for structuring, writing and approval of NORSOK standards. Further it describes the expert groups responsibility with regards to mirror work to corresponding ISO and CEN committees. This directive is written for experts group members, resources involved in NORSOK revision projects, project managers in Standards Norway and members of sector board petroleum industry.

Download Direktiv A-001:2021 (which is available in Norwegian only)

How to buy NORSOK standards

NORSOK standards can be bought from our web shop. The standards can be added to a web subscription, printed directly or you can buy printed and bound copies sendt to you.

  • Use the search box at the top of the page to search for the specific NORSOK standard or type in NORSOK for a full list of all available standards.
    Under each presentation of a NORSOK standard you will find the possibility to buy the specific standard.

Read more about how to get access to NORSOK standards.

Facts about NORSOK

There are currently about 79 national NORSOK standards in active use.

Recognised standards, both NORSOK and ISO, today form an important basis for the regulations in force on the Norwegian continental shelf, and Norway has so-called function-based regulations, where standards are an important factor in the interpretation of the various regulatory requirements.

The regulations refer to standards that provide more detailed descriptions of how things should be done. About half of these standards are used by the Petroleum Safety Authority as part of regulatory management in the North Sea.

Standard Norge

Poster on valid NORSOK standards (If you click on the picture, you can download a larger version of the poster in pdf-format.)

Tripartite cooperation

Standards Norway today facilitates petroleum standardization work by hundreds of Norwegian experts in various committees and working groups nationally and internationally. Petroleum standardization in Norway is a voluntary tripartite cooperation with participants from employers' organisations, employee unions and the government.

Participants from the industry are experts from the operators, suppliers, service companies, the Petroleum Safety Authority and the maritime industry, and the sharing of experience and expertise leads to best practice in the form of standards.

The Sector Board Petroleum Industry ensures overall standardization in the industry through coordination of international standardization work in ISO and CEN and the industry standardization work of NORSOK.

NORSOK standards