Organic petrology is a marginal science that is quite practicable. At present, it has developed into a routine research tool that is widely applied in petroleum exploration and assess ment. Based on several years’research of the authors, this paper presents the advances in organic petrological studies on immature source rocks, including the classification and characteristics of macerals, the composition of macerals and types of organic matter, the abundance and evolution of organic matter, oil2prone macerals, hydrocarbon generation and expulsion. All these results show that organic petrology is of considerable value pertaining to its application in the assessment of immature oil and gas. The immature source rocks consist of various macerals with obvious heterogeneity, contain different hydrocarbon-generating macerals with different oil thresholds and oil peaks, and show a two-staged evolutionary pattern of organic matter.