American Petroleum Institute

52 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 12 AMERICAN PETROLEUM INST I TUTE API also goes through an audit with ANSI every five years to make sure it is abiding by these processes and procedures. Regarding the actual standards development, Burr admits that it can be a challenging process. “When you get a group of thirty engineers in a room, it is not always easy to achieve consensus. But that’s what the API team is good at - finding consensus among subject matter experts, publishing high-quality standards, and getting them utilized within the industry.” Once developed and published, adopting API standards is voluntary because the EPA does not mandate them. However, federal and state regulations incorporate API standards and, increasingly, international regulations by international regulators. “In the US, over 600 of our standards are referenced in the Code of Federal Regulations, over 3000 times our standards Some API member companies also originate from the supply and manufacturing sector, primarily those that supply equipment and services used by operators in other industry segments. “Besides being a trade association, the API is also a standards-developing organization. It published its first standard in 1924 under somewhat peculiar circumstances,” continues Burr. “In World War One, when the US was supporting the war effort in Europe, there were drilling delays over on the battlefield in Europe. The military tried to pool resources to help with drilling to supply oil for tanks, but they couldn’t because of a lack of uniformity in pipe sizes, threads, and all the different types of equipment.” “The industry realized the need for a uniform standard for equipment used in different regions worldwide. So, API published its first industry-standard then, and we’ve been publishing standards since then. Today, we publish over eight hundred standards.” Standards development is a delicate balancing act, and it takes a hundred-year-old organization to balance all competing interests and develop consensus-based standards. “The standards development process is quite rigorous because the API must abide by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) regulations to be accredited by them as an official standards organization,” Burr says. “One of their requirements is transparency. The API must guarantee a transparent process for publishing draft standards and stakeholder consultations. We must have a balanced and fair makeup of our standards committee to ensure that all interest groups like industry, NGOs, academia, and regulators participate in our standards development process.” “This way, standards use the best-proven engineering practices and are not heavily weighed on by a certain stakeholder perspective.”