Talk:American Petroleum Institute

message: I added the NPOV tag because I felt that the general tone of this article did not seem very objective. It seems to me that the article has had various sentences added at whim by those who hate the API, and by those who adore it.  I also added the stub tag - and thus until this article is expanded further, and until it cites more comprehensively its sources, i think its neutrality should remain in question. This is especially true considering that it is THE primary institute that gets referred to when people mention (especially in the media) the "oil lobby".  It would be unfair for users, when searching for who this amorphous "oil lobby" is, to stumble upon this article and not be clued in to the fact that there are diametrically opposing points of view on the matter.
EvanClifthorne 23:33, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  General Tone 

message: This needs more work. API sets standards in several different areas of the industry, including drilling and production equipment, refining, lubricants, offshore engineering and construction. There is a spec for centrifugal pumps in refinery and flowline service, but the standard centrifugal pumps used on drilling rigs are not controlled by API (although they may be surrounded by other drilling equipment that is governed by an API spec).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marzolian (talk • contribs) 04:22, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Role in settings specifications 

message: There is a "special report" from Mother Jones[http://www.motherjones.com/special-reports/2009/12/dirty-dozen-climate-change-denial
] titled "The Dirty Dozen of Climate Change Denial" that is being used as a source on multiple pages, including this one. Please comment there, and perhaps we can come to a consensus that applies to all the pages where this is used.
*Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#The Dirty Dozen of Climate Change Denial
*Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#The Dirty Dozen of Climate Change Denial
-CypherPunkyBrewster (talk) 20:08, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Dirty Dozen of Climate Change Denial: Question raised on [[WP:RSN]] and [[WP:NPOVN]] 

message: * 
* 
Thank you. Hugh (talk) 20:29, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: The "Standards and certification" section could do with cleaning up by someone who has a clue about this stuff. At the moment its just a list, but, well, questions include: 
* is there any conflict between the "standards" and the "advocacy" roles?
* what's the relationship between API standards and state+federal standards? Does the API act to effectively set federal standards? They seem to imply that they do
William M. Connolley (talk) 22:01, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The API is both an advocacy and a standards setting organization, although this is something of a conflict of interest. It is basically because governments in the US have abdicated their standards setting responsibilities to the private sector, and by default the API has become the standards setting body for the entire US, (not to mention many third world countries which can't afford to develop their own standards). The API actually does a good job of developing standards, so you can't really fault their expertise. It is something of a conflict of interest but, in my experience getting the US federal and 50 state governments to head in the same direction and agree on standards is something like herding cats, so the API is as good as it gets. I'm speaking from the perspective of the Canadian industry, whose standards have not a great deal of convergence with API standards. In Canada, unlike in the US, the provincial governments have unequivocal constitutional authority over natural resources and set the standards. The equivalent to the API, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) is mostly an advocacy body.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 15:24, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: There are different meanings to the word standards, posing a risk of the logical fallacy of equivocation. The types of standards API is involved with are mostly - not entirely - questions of uniform definitions, testing procedures, and engineering specifications. This is the same function that ASTM performs in many other fields. Without such uniform definitions, drill pipe from different makers wouldn't thread together, and you would never know if supplier A's grade of cement is equivalent to supplier B's. If this is a conflict of interest, I don't see how. If any state wants to mandate its own standards, it has, of course, the power to do so, but I see few items on the list in the article that would interest most politicians or regulators, who usually involve themselves in normative standards, rather than definitional standards.  Plazak (talk) 02:28, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The API standards are unequivocally true standards, but in Canada the provinces set most of the equivalent industry standards. As I said, unlike American States, Canadian provinces set their own standards and define their own terms, which often differ from API ones. The difference mainly arose because provinces have unequivocal constitutional authority over both natural resources and private property. Unlike US states they can seize private corporation assets without notice and without compensation if they get upset with companies, which sometimes happens, and rewrite rules without deferring to private interests. There is also a tradition of direct government involvement in industry in Canada, which you don't have in the US. An example of a provincial standard is the Alberta Energy Regulator's [| Directive 017: Measurement Requirements for Oil and Gas Operations]. It parallels the API [| MPMS: Manual of Petroleum Measurement Standards] but does not really follow it, although it incorporates parts of the latter by reference. The former is free since it is a government document, but the latter is several feet long and costs 9,064.00 to buy. The Canadian industry does things quite a bit differently, mostly in the interests of regulatory efficiency - the MPMS is too complicated and cumbersome - but of course because our kilometrage differs from your mileage:-)RockyMtnGuy (talk) 17:51, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Just an additional note: I checked and the article does not seem to make any references to the API Manual of Petroleum Measurement Standards (MPMS). This would appear to be something of an oversight since the MPMS is the basic standard for petroleum measurement in the US, and some other countries (It is available in Spanish, and I know that a number of Spanish speaking countries use it.)RockyMtnGuy (talk) 19:03, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standards and certification 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on American Petroleum Institute. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090821142612/http://www.ccainstitute.org/who-we-are/our-board-bios/jack-n-gerard.html to http://www.ccainstitute.org/who-we-are/our-board-bios/jack-n-gerard.html
*Added  tag to http://www.nhpr.org/rick-perry-stumps-manchester-next-stop-iowa
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100521011930/http://www.piping-designer.com/American_Petroleum_Institute to http://www.piping-designer.com/American_Petroleum_Institute
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 19:41, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion:
* 
You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 18:51, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion 

message: People seem to be keen for some version of
: The organization has aggressively promoted climate change denial and acted against proposed mitigation measures since 1980. Over time, API has incrementally retreated on the existence, attribution, and severity of the issue as public opinion and political pressure made it less tenable to reject the scientific consensus outright.
to be included. But if you want to write "aggressively promoted climate change denial" you need good sources. Or, better, you need one good source. Not lots of rather poor sources. From this crop:
* the Graun: not desperately reliable on this kind of stuff, mostly isn't reporting denial as a fact, but people's opinions on it: for example, Sheldon Whitehouse's view. And "The city of Hoboken in New Jersey", but then they're suing API, so hardly neutral. And so on. And nothing about aggression, which appears to be entirely made up.
* the Atlantic: doesn't appear to accuse API of denial at all.
* Smoggies: appears to accuse GCC.
William M. Connolley (talk) 09:59, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Bold assertions need reliable sources. Magnolia677 (talk) 18:15, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Denial: sources 

message: I don't believe this  and I don't think the sources demonstrate it. Further, it is implausible: API revenues are ~$200M/yr, and our article claims ~$3M/yr on lobbying William M. Connolley (talk) 16:05, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Much of its work has been dedicated to the advancement of [[climate change denial]] and blocking of [[climate change mitigation|climate legislation]] to defend the interests of its [[fossil fuels lobby|constituent organizations]]