Pipelines represent a significant safety, environmental and financial risk for the operators. The cost of a shutdown and repair of a pipeline can be tremendous. This is particularly relevant for offshore pipelines and especially for deep-water pipelines. Some of these pipelines can take years to repair if possible at all. It is therefore very important for the operators to keep the probability of failure low and ensure the pipeline can be operated the entire design life without any failures. The inherent or nominal failure probability specified in the design codes is in many cases significantly different from what we experience in real life. The presentation will outline the background and reason for this difference. The presentation will give an outline of DNV GL’s recently updated Service Specification for Verification and Certification of Submarine Pipelines, DNV-OSS-301, that can be downloaded free of charge from our web site. This service specification can help operators keep the probability of failure for their offshore pipeline system more in line with the nominal failure probability that are inherent in the design and construction codes used. Further the paper will show examples from serious failure of pipelines and how such risk based technical assurance can help avoiding such failures.