From time-to-time international standards are withdrawn, amended, updated or new standards are introduced that change the current thinking on existing subject matter. This paper demonstrates the complex process of reviewing several prominent Cathodic Protection and Alternating Current Mitigation standards and then attempting to benchmark suitable protection criteria. Today common Right of Way issues exist due to the convergence of pipelines, high voltage powerlines, telecommunications and other services that produce an environment conducive to rapid corrosion on previously secure pipeline assets.

In this paper we review aspects of ISO15589-1, NACE SP0169, EN50162, EN13509, NACE TM0497, NACE SP0104, NACE International Task Groups 211 and ISO22426. In addition to these classical works relating to Cathodic Protection, this paper gives attention to aspects of the contemporary Alternating Current standards and reports namely NACE SP0177, ISO18086, NACE SP21424-2018, NACE International Technical Report 35110 and a groundbreaking paper published by the Joint EFC/Ceocor Working Group on 20 May 2021.

As these documents are unpacked and assessed it soon becomes evident that the exclusive use of Cathodic Protection in a highly congested Right of Way does not guarantee that corrosion will be curtailed on well coated, buried steel pipelines. Some comments and recommendations are made to guide the thinking of engineers, pipeline owners and operators towards applying suitable designs and more importantly monitoring the most critical variables in predicting the probability of corrosion in complex Alternating Current and Direct Current environments.