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Preparing valuable olefins from cheap and abundant alkane resources has long been a challenging task in organic synthesis, which mainly suffers from harsh reaction conditions and narrow scopes. Homogeneous transition metals catalyzed dehydrogenation of alkanes has attracted much attention for its excellent catalytic activities under relatively milder conditions. Among them, base metal catalyzed oxidative alkane dehydrogenation has emerged as a viable strategy for olefin synthesis for its usage of cheap catalysts, compatibility with various functional groups, and low reaction temperature. In this review, we discuss recent development of base metal catalyzed alkane dehydrogenation under oxidative conditions and their application in constructing complex molecules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]