Eighty percent of the world's oil/gas reserves are associated with the lithospheric plate subduction zones. Extensive exploration for oil and gas is being conducted in the Arctic. Four oil-generating time intervals were identified within the Arctic Shelf. Oil and gas potential estimates of the western Russian Arctic directly depend on its geodynamic evolution. This article reviews the region's multi-stage evolution and substantiates space-time patterns in the interaction of the geodynamic processes causing the generation of depositional environments in sedimentary complexes of shelf marine basins.