Periodic Internal Inspection Method often results in under-inspection or over-inspection for large-scale crude oil tank. Therefore, how to determine reasonable internal inspection interval (INTII) has great significance on balancing the safe operation requirement and inspection cost for crude oil tanks. Here, RBI (risk-based inspection) technology is used to quantitatively assess the risk of crude oil tanks in an oil depot in China. The risk comparison between tank shell and bottom shows that the risk of tank depends on the risk of tank bottom. The prediction procedure of INTII for crude oil tanks is also presented. The INTII predicted by RBI method is gradually extended with the increasing of the acceptable risk level. The method to determine the acceptable risk of crude oil tanks is proposed, by which 3.54E+04 are taken as the acceptable risk of the oil depot. The safety factor of 0.8 is proposed to determine the final INTIIs for 18 crude oil tanks. The INTII requirement in China code SY/T 5921, 5-7 years, is very conservative and lower than predicted service life of tanks. The INTIIs predicted by Gumbel method are smaller than by RBI method for tanks with short INTII. Therefore, this paper recommends RBI method to predict the INTII for crude oil tanks. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.