Two of the most dangerous jobs in the industry are climbing a flare stack and entering a storage tank. A drone can now do the first look on both without a single person leaving the ground, and increasingly the classification societies accept the result.
The Two Worst Inspection Jobs
Ask anyone who has worked offshore integrity which inspection tasks they least want to send a person to, and two come up again and again. The first is the flare stack, a tall structure that has to be inspected from height, traditionally by rope access technicians dangling on ropes or from scaffolding that can take weeks to erect and cost a fortune, often requiring the flare to be shut down and production lost. The second is internal tank and vessel inspection, where a person must physically enter a confined space that may hold residual hydrocarbons, low oxygen, or toxic gas.
Both jobs are essential, because flares and tanks corrode and crack like everything else, and both are genuinely dangerous. Confined space entry is one of the leading causes of fatalities in the industry, and falls from height and exposure to hazardous gas are ever-present risks in flare and structure work. For decades there was no way around sending people into harm to get the data. Now there is, at least for the first and most frequent stage of the work.
What the Drone Actually Changes
An inspection drone equipped with high-resolution optical and thermal cameras can fly up a live flare boom and capture detailed condition data in a single short flight, while the flare keeps burning and production keeps running. It can fly inside a tank, a caisson, or a ballast space and stream imagery of the internal structure without a person setting foot inside. The exposure that used to be unavoidable simply disappears for that stage of the work.
The drone does not make the flare safe to climb or the tank safe to enter. It removes the need to do either for the routine look that used to demand both.
The economics follow the safety. Where scaffolding for a flare campaign runs into weeks of work and hundreds of thousands in cost, and rope access is charged by the man-hour with mobilisation on top, a drone survey is a fraction of the time and cost. Just as importantly, because the asset can often stay in operation during the flight, the enormous indirect cost of a production shutdown is avoided entirely. That combination is why drone inspection of elevated and enclosed assets was one of the first clear wins for the technology and has stuck.
It Is Not Just a Camera Anymore
Early inspection drones carried a camera and little else. Modern payloads go well beyond visual coverage, which is what has moved drones from novelty to a genuine inspection tool.
High-resolution optical: Detailed visual coverage of corrosion, coating breakdown, cracking, and physical damage, close enough to plan follow-up work precisely.
Thermal imaging: Temperature profiles that reveal hotspots, insulation failures, and leaks on flares, pipework, and electrical assets before they fail.
Ultrasonic thickness: Drone-mounted UT probes that measure remaining metal thickness on tanks, pipes, and pressure vessels, catching corrosion and wall loss.
LiDAR and mapping: Dimensional data that builds a repeatable three-dimensional record of a structure for comparison over time.
One critical detail governs where these drones can fly. In areas where flammable gas or explosive dust may be present, a standard drone is a genuine ignition risk from electrical sparks, static, or battery heat. Only an ATEX-certified inspection drone, built and approved for explosive atmospheres, is permitted to operate in those zones. Using the wrong drone in a hazardous area is not a shortcut. It is a hazard in its own right.
The Class Societies Are On Board
For a long time, the open question was whether a drone survey would actually be accepted for compliance purposes, or whether it was just a useful pre-check before the “real” inspection. That question has largely been answered. Major classification societies, including ABS, DNV, and Lloyd’s Register, now recognise remote inspection techniques, and specialist inspection companies operate as approved service suppliers conducting class-credited drone and robotic surveys of ship structures and offshore units.
This acceptance is what turns drone inspection from a convenience into a compliance tool. When a class surveyor will accept remote inspection data for a close-up survey of a structure, the drone is no longer duplicating work that a person still has to do. It is doing the work. That shift, from unofficial pre-check to accepted survey method, is what has made the technology strategically important rather than merely handy.
From Calendar Inspections to Condition Monitoring
The deeper change drones enable is not just doing the same inspections more safely. It is doing more of them. When an inspection no longer requires scaffolding, shutdowns, and rope access teams, it becomes cheap enough to run far more often. Some floating production operators now fly drone surveys of their hull and topside structures monthly, building a running record of how the asset is deteriorating rather than a handful of snapshots years apart.
A yearly inspection tells you the condition on one day. A monthly one tells you the trend, and the trend is what lets you act before a defect becomes a failure.
That density of data supports a move away from rigid, calendar-based inspection toward risk-based and condition-based models, where intervention is driven by what the data actually shows rather than by the date on a schedule. For asset integrity, that is a meaningful upgrade. Deterioration patterns that are invisible in sporadic manual inspections become clear in a continuous record, and problems can be caught earlier and cheaper.
Where the Human Still Comes In
None of this makes the inspector obsolete, and it is a mistake to sell it that way. The realistic and honest model is that the drone does the screening, the first look, fast and safely, defining exactly where a problem is and how severe it appears. Hands-on access by a qualified person is then reserved for confirmation, detailed assessment, and repair, deployed precisely where the drone data shows it is needed rather than across an entire structure on spec.
Used that way, drone inspection makes the whole programme better. It shortens the time to a first look, it removes people from danger during the screening stage, it targets expensive access methods where they add value, and it feeds a richer, more consistent data set into engineering decisions. The people with the qualifications still make the calls. They just no longer have to hang off a flare or crawl into a tank to gather the information those calls depend on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a flare stack really be inspected without a shutdown?
Yes, for visual and thermal inspection. A drone can fly up a live flare boom and capture high-resolution optical and thermal imagery in a single short flight while the flare continues to operate, avoiding both the safety exposure of climbing and the large indirect cost of a production shutdown. Physical repairs still require the appropriate access and controls.
Are drone inspections accepted by classification societies?
Increasingly, yes. Major classification societies including ABS, DNV, and Lloyd’s Register recognise remote inspection techniques, and approved service suppliers conduct class-credited drone surveys of ship structures and offshore units. This means a drone survey can satisfy certain close-up survey requirements rather than only serving as an informal pre-check, though the specific acceptance depends on the class society and the survey scope.
What is an ATEX-certified drone and when is it needed?
ATEX certification confirms a drone is built and approved to operate safely in an explosive atmosphere, where flammable gas or combustible dust may be present. A standard drone can be an ignition source in such areas through sparks, static, or battery heat, so only an ATEX-certified inspection drone should be flown in classified hazardous zones such as inside certain tanks or around process equipment.
Does drone inspection replace human inspectors?
No. The practical model is that drones handle the screening stage, capturing fast, safe, high-quality data and pinpointing where problems are, while qualified inspectors carry out confirmation, detailed assessment, and repair, targeted precisely where the drone data shows it is needed. The technology removes people from danger during screening and makes their hands-on time more focused, rather than eliminating the role.
Sources: Offshore Magazine, drones redefining offshore integrity (class-certified RIT) · Altomaxx, confined-space RIT under DNVGL-CP-0484 · ATEX-certified inspection drones and hazardous-area use · ABS, DNV, Lloyd’s Register remote inspection technique programmes
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