Abstract: Frequent oil spill accidents have caused serious pollution to the marine ecological environment. Oil gelling agent (OGA) is an excellent oil spilled recovery technology. This paper reviews the development history of OGA and proposes a reasonable classification from the structure. Analyze a series of evaluation experiments for effectiveness issues and oil-gelling recovery technology in order to provide a reference scheme for scientific and reasonable evaluation indices. Then, for the research progress of OGA materials, this paper lists the current status of phase-selective organogelators, porous-based organogelators, materials for actual oil spill treatment. Degradable adsorption materials may be the trend of research and application of OGA. Finally, from the economy and technology, the current development difficulties and the next research focus of OGA are analyzed.