Petroleum Convenience Alliance for Technology Standards

   Major Standards Groups Announce Agreement to Cooperate on Global Standards 

 December 15, 2005, Alexandria, VA and London, United Kingdom - The Petroleum Convenience Alliance for Technology Standards (PCATS) and the International Forecourt Standards Forum (IFSF) announced  today that they have reached an understanding on future cooperation that will promote further globalization of standards. IFSF, representing European oil companies, and PCATS, representing US petroleum interests, are the two leading standards bodies operating in the international petroleum retailing environment. The agreement states that the organizations will work to harmonize their existing standards and to jointly develop future standards in the petroleum retailing environment. Simon Stocks, IFSF President, in announcing the agreement, stated that, "We welcome the opportunity to work more closely with PCATS and to build on their vision of the future. Together the two organizations represent many of the major retailing markets in the world.  We can now avoid duplication of effort to the benefit of all participants in the community and our constituencies."  

John Hervey, PCATS Executive Director, endorsed the same perspective.  "In the past the two groups have worked in different spaces and there have been little conflicts in our solutions.  Increasingly we now find that we are beginning to address the same issues, so cooperation makes more sense.” Hervey added that, “Working together we can ensure that we avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’, for example by building on the valuable set of standards that each body has created. Being able to leverage the work that IFSF has done in the area of connections to forecourt equipment, such as pumps/dispensers, price signs and other equipment, will be of great benefit to our community.” The new agreement provides that where a new standard is required, the two groups will endeavor to develop one common global solution rather than two parallel ones.  Equally important, where a standard adopted by one group already exists, that always will be considered as the starting point for any new standard by the other organization.  If any enhancements are identified, rather than developing a new standard, a new version of the existing standard will be processed following the owning organization's procedures for updating the original standard.  The agreement recently was endorsed by the boards of both organizations and will take effect on January 1, 2006. 

 ------30----

 Notes for editors In November 1995, the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) initiated its Technology Standards Project, covering four main areas of focus:  (electronic data exchange, interfaces between point-of-sale and back office systems; device integration; and payment systems.  By 2000, NACS had begun to develop XML versions for a number of applications, based on the standards it had been developing.  Beginning in 2002, NACS embarked on a new direction for its device integration work, starting the development of an Open Site Architecture (OSA) to embrace TCP/IP connectivity for all devices, including the fuel dispenser, located at petroleum/convenience store locations and back offices, and to provide XML messaging for communications on a peer-to-peer basis.  Several demonstrations of this OSA have been conducted and documents have been developed to address potential implementation among petroleum companies, distributors, and retailers.   In the payments area, NACS was instrumental in developing a terminal-to-host messaging standard based on ISO 8583 (X9.104: 2004) that has been adopted by X9, Inc., the United States standards organization responsible for financial transaction standards.  A number of major United States oil companies, network providers, solution providers, and retailers have now adopted and implemented many of the NACS Standards.   The Petroleum Convenience Alliance for Technology Standards (PCATS) was incorporated in 2003, all of the NACS intellectual property related to existing technology standards was transferred to PCATS, and PCATS has taken over the entire responsibility for standards development in this space within the United States.   Recognition of PCATS as a “standards development organization” under US antitrust law was published by the United States Department of Justice in 2005. The International Forecourt Standards Forum (IFSF) was formed in 1993 to address and coordinate efforts by the European oil companies to develop common forecourt device standards, in order to create interconnectivity and communication between disparate devices for use in the petroleum retail business.  A new legal structure was adopted in 2003 and the organization became IFSF Ltd.  Since 1999, thousands of sites have been installed using the IFSF standards. Examples of these include standards for connectivity between a site controller and:- 

• Fuel dispensers (pumps)
• Price signs
• Automatic tank gauges
• Environmental sensors
• Car washes
• ISO 8583 card payment protocol for the petroleum environment - this is already closely aligned with the PCATS standard. IFSF have identified this as three critical elements:-
  
  • EPS (Electronics payments server) to POS (Point of Sale)
  • POS to Host
  • Host to Host
• and others

 Among those standards is a TCP/IP Ethernet connectivity standard that allows applications beyond those covered in its original, LON-based device standards.    IFSF has already developed sophisticated test and certification tools to validate user’s applications.