In recent years, high pressure air injection(HPAI) has been proven as an effective method for enhanced oil recovery from light oil reservoirs. This technique has received considerable attention as a relatively new technique for IOR, and has led to increasing interests from companies for exploring the feasibility of the HPAI project in their reservoir holdings. The development history of HPAI for light oil reservoirs is introduced in terms of the laboratory research and field implementation based on published literatures. The mechanism of HPAI is also presented. In the meantime, the project phases, including candidate reservoirs screening and evaluating, project design, and project implementation, as well as the road-map and key factors for each phase are discussed in detail. An analysis on the characteristics and advantages of HPAI process are also conducted. Along with the current status of existing techniques for EOR, an insight into the large economic potential and the enormous application prospect for HPAI to depleted, water flooded light oil reservoirs, low and ultra-low permeability reservoirs, and high pressure high temperature reservoirs are also provided.