Standardization, as the basis of pipeline, plays an important role in the sound development of pipeline operation and ensures its safety and efficacy on technology. In recent twenty years, pipeline standards have been developed and revised significantly in the world. A growing number of engineers would like to know which standards are more relevant to them when they face massive pipeline standards from different countries and organizations. However, there is no such a method that can objectively analyze the development tendency of pipeline standards for the whole world. This paper developed a new method and discussed the technical basis of the procedures. Firstly, the general methodology of bibliometrics and content analysis was reviewed. The bibliometrics and content analysis are important tools to estimate the development direction of pipeline standards. Then the national standards of 7 countries, including China, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Russia, as well as the standards of international standardization organizations, including ISO, IEC, and EN, were collected and analyzed. In this stage, more than 18 thousands standards were taken into account and the wide coverage would represent the world development tendency of pipeline standards as much as possible. Finally, four development trends of oil and gas pipelines standards were found in this study.