The development of new oil production areas and deep water activities requires more efficient and reliable cathodic protection (CP) designs. In this regard, laboratory tests that simulate service conditions can be very valuable. Preliminary results have shown that it is possible to obtain, on a short term basis, meaningful data that can be applied to the design of offshore CP systems. Current practice and challenging aspects of the methodological aspects of using laboratory electrochemical techniques to develop CP guidelines for offshore structures are addressed. The discussion focuses on those aspects that are more relevant to obtain on a short-term basis useful information that could provide for the successful long-term operation of new CP systems. A protocol recently introduced by Hartt et al. was utilized to evaluate the potential of relatively short-term laboratory data for predicting mean current densities. New
ways of predicting long-term current densities based on accelerated laboratory tests are discussed. Keywords: Cathodic protection, sacrificial anodes, deepwaters, warm waters, short-term laboratory techniques, mean current densities