How Drones Can Benefit LNG Terminals: Tanks and Flares

How can drones benefit LNG terminals?

Drones for LNG terminals mainly solve one problem: the inspection that forces a person to climb, enter or hang over something dangerous. Tank roofs, flare stacks and pipe racks sit at height or in tight spaces, and reaching them takes permits, planning and crew time. A drone can fly a planned route, capture visual and thermal images and hand them to an inspector who decides where a closer look is needed.

The biggest gain is knowing about a problem before it turns into a repair. Defects on tank shells, flare tips and flanges often stay hidden until the fix costs far more than the inspection that would have found it. A drone gives you a regular, repeatable look at those assets, and it lowers how often workers must go into high or confined positions for a routine check.

Drones for LNG terminals work best as the first pass, not a replacement for every climb. Flights can run while the plant stays in service, and the images show what needs hands-on work. The rest of this page covers the problems at this kind of site, how the work runs day to day, what a drone cannot do, and how to get started.

What problems do LNG terminals face with tanks, flares and piping?

An LNG terminal runs a chain of large assets: storage tanks, cryogenic piping, pumps, compressors, a loading jetty and one or more flare stacks. The hazards are rarely sudden. They build slowly, through a flange that weeps, insulation that degrades, a flare tip that cracks or a roof seal that wears. Each one is easy to miss from the ground and expensive to fix once it grows.

Finding those problems usually means a person climbs or enters. Oil and gas work gives a clear warning about height. According to a CDC report on oil and gas extraction workers, based on OSHA investigations from 2005 to 2014, falls killed 63 workers over the decade, about 6.3 per year. That dataset covers drilling rather than LNG terminals, but it shows how serious the height risk is in the wider industry.

The same report found that 52% of fatalities involved falls from more than 30 feet. Flare stacks and tank roofs can sit well above that height, so the exposure is real even though the sites differ.

What are the main benefits of drone inspections at an LNG terminal?

The first benefit is fewer climbs. A drone can cover a tank shell and roof, the tip and body of a flare stack, and horizontal and vertical piping without a crew hanging from a scaffold or rope. Fewer climbs means fewer people in the riskiest positions for routine checks, which is the main reason to look at drones for LNG terminals.

The second benefit is inspecting while the plant runs. One vendor case report describes a flare stack inspected by drone while the stack stayed in service, which avoided a plant shutdown and a stack climb. That is a vendor-reported result, so confirm it with your own flare team, but it shows where the time savings come from.

The third benefit is a consistent record. Each flight can repeat the same route, angles and thermal view, so an inspector can compare this season's images with last season's. Thermal imaging can flag heat changes that may point to a leak, which gives the team a clear place to look first.

How does a drone work at an LNG terminal day to day?

A typical inspection starts with a planned route, set with your operations and safety teams, that covers the assets due for a check. The pilot follows the site's hazardous-area rules and permit conditions. Flights are timed around planned work, so the drone is not overhead during a lift, a maintenance task or an unplanned release.

During the flight, visual and thermal feeds go to an inspector on the ground, who marks anything that needs follow-up. Findings attach to a site map and a work order. The crew then decides whether the spot needs rope access, a scaffold or a camera run inside a vessel, and schedules that work.

Afterward, each flight's data is stored with its date and route, so trends show up over time. We train your staff to fly the drone, read the feeds and keep the records, and we service the drone nationwide, with on-site dispatch when a unit needs attention.

Which areas of an LNG terminal can a drone cover?

Most of the work falls into six areas, each with its own check. The list below shows where a drone usually adds the most value. It is not a promise for every asset on the site.

Your layout, the age of each asset and your inspection schedule set the priority. During the site assessment we map which areas need the most climbs and the longest waits for access, so the first flights go where they remove the most risk.

Some assets are easier than others. Open tank roofs and flare tips seen from above are straightforward. Inside vessels, under insulation and inside closed pipe runs still need a person, a camera on a line or a specialist tool.

How does a drone work alongside your existing staff?

A drone does not replace the operators, inspectors and maintenance crew who keep an LNG terminal running. It changes how their time is spent. The pilot, the inspector and the crew each keep their role, and the drone takes over the routine look that used to need a climb.

A workable setup keeps a small team on site: a trained pilot, an inspector who reads the feeds and a crew for hands-on work. Plan for that team on every flight. A drone with no trained person on site is not a plan that holds up, since the findings then go nowhere.

The comparison below shows how the job changes when the drone takes the first look.

What drives the savings, in hours and labor?

The savings come from hours that no longer go to climbs, scaffold builds and confined-entry permits for routine checks. A climb-based survey ties up a crew for the whole task, while a planned flight with a trained pilot and inspector covers the same route with fewer people exposed. We have not verified a sourced hour range for this work, so we measure the hours from your own inspection schedule during the site assessment rather than promise a figure.

Staffing is the other side of the math. According to a jobs data aggregator that cites BLS May 2025 data, about 18,030 gas plant operators work in the US. Sources disagree on the projection for that group, so treat the count as a baseline, not a forecast.

Demand is rising. According to EIA data reported by Oil and Gas Journal, US LNG exports averaged 17.4 bcfd in the first six months of 2026, up 23% from the same period of 2025. More output means more tanks, flares and piping running hard, and the inspection schedule does not shrink to match.

EIA's short-term outlook, as reported by a daily energy news service, expects exports to average 18.7 bcfd in the first half of 2027. It also expects five LNG export projects to start up and ramp up by the end of 2027, which adds assets to inspect.

What can a drone not do?

A drone sees surfaces. It cannot look inside a vessel, under insulation or down a closed pipe, and it cannot measure gas concentration on its own. It cannot make a repair. One inspection service's project spotlight describes a 250-foot legacy flare stack where rope access crews and a drone used inside the stack were both part of the job. The drone confirmed cracking, but crews were still needed for the repairs.

Weather limits flights. Wind, rain and poor light cut the days a drone can fly, and heat from active equipment can make thermal images harder to read. Plan the schedule with those limits in mind rather than as an afterthought.

Drones add their own rules. Hazardous-area permits, pilot training and flight plans set by the site all apply, and they take time to arrange. A drone works best as one part of an inspection program, not as the whole program.

How do you get started?

A program of drones for LNG terminals starts with a free site assessment. We walk the terminal with your operations and safety leads, map the assets that need regular checks, and note where crews climb or enter most often. That shows where a drone pays off and where it does not.

We then pick the right drone system for the site, lease it through financing, and deploy and integrate it with your inspection records. We train your staff and service the drone nationwide. The lease payment comes in the quote, which we send after the site assessment, and lease financing programs vary by site.

Most terminals begin with one leased drone on the checks that cause the most climbs. Expand only after your inspectors trust the feeds and your crews see fewer routine climbs. That keeps the first step small and the results easy to measure.