API 500 Rules Interpretation

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Our company does a good deal of work on marine termianls handling petroleum and its products. Sometimes the API rules are very difficult to interpret in view of reality. Consider API 500 Figure 96 where it is stated "Outdoors - Piping with Valves, Screwed Fittings, Flanges or Similar accessories...etc" should be classified as a Div 2 location in the open air. In the case where a pier is some distance offshore and is accessed by a long trestle with half a dozen pipes joined by flanges (or screwed fittings) handling volatile liquids, following these rules, the entire trestle would have to be classified because of staggered joints in the pipes. This is unreasonable but using this API rule, an AHJ would require just that even though this standard is labeled as "Recommended Practices".

Or, am I reading the Recommended Practice wrongly??

Any help on this question of classifying flanged piping, especially from past or present API members would be greatly appreciated

Charlie D.