Abstract: In recent years, China’s oil dependence on foreign countries has been increasing year by year, and the national energy security is becoming more and more severe, while the“shale revolution”in North America is actively moving forward. In order to broaden oil and gas exploration and development, and to find successive resources for increasing crude oil reserves and production in China, the types, potentials and prospects of continental shale oil in China were investigated and analyzed systematically. The results show that the continental shale oil resources in China have four geological characteristics, and can be divided into two types in terms of maturity: medium-high maturity and medium-low maturity. Both of the two types have great potentials – the former is estimated to be about 200×108tons, and the latter has a great amount of technically recoverable, prospective resources in situ transform. In recent years, a lot of progress in shale oil exploration have been made. For the shale oil of medium-high maturity, exploration discoveries have been made in three types of shale accumulation: synchronogenic source - reservoir, separated source - reservoir and exclusive shale. For the shale oil of medium-low maturity, in situ transform technology is under development and pilot test. Finally, in view of the future development of continental shale oil, four risk points are put forward and corresponding countermeasures are proposed based on China’s national conditions and actual geological conditions. Comprehensive research concludes that industrial development of continental shale oil is expected and it will be an important successive resource for increasing crude oil reserves and production in China.