An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based intelligent anomaly identification method for petroleum pipeline inspection is provided. The precise UAV cruise technology is combined with a target detection algorithm to design an intelligent petroleum pipeline inspection method, which realizes fast anomaly detection for petroleum pipeline inspection based on the existing computer processing capability. In addition, a lot of optimization algorithms and improvements are made for target detection under special working conditions of UAV inspection, and a dedicated target detection network model adapted to these conditions is trained. The UAV-based intelligent anomaly identification method realizes accurate, real-time anomaly reporting for petroleum pipeline inspection, reduces the blindness of manual inspection, greatly improves inspection efficiency, reduces labor costs, and has practicability.