In the context of significant depletion of traditional proven oil reserves in the Russian Federation and the inevitability of searching for new directions of study and expansion of the raw material base of hydrocarbon raw materials in hard-to-reach regions and on the Arctic shelf, a scientific search is underway for accumulations in complex geological conditions and in manifestations that differ significantly from traditional ones, which include the processes of oil and gas formation and preservation of oil and gas in low-permeability “shale” strata and in heterogeneous reservoirs at great and super-great depths. Within the oil and gas provinces of the world, drilling of a number of deep and super-deep wells has revealed deposits at great depths, established connections between hydrocarbon deposits and “traces” of hydrocarbon migration left in the core of deep wells, which has made it possible to significantly re-evaluate theoretical ideas on the issue of oil and gas formation conditions and the search for technologies aimed at solving applied problems. Modern geochemical, chromatographic, bituminological, coal petrographic and pyrolytic methods of studying oil and bitumoids extracted from the host rocks of deep well cores give a hope for identifying correlations in the oil-source system, revealing processes that determine the possibility of hydrocarbon formation and accumulation, and defining predictive criteria for oil and gas potential at great depths.