The outer parts of collision mountain belts are commonly represented by fold and thrust belts. Major advances in understanding these tectonic settings have arisen from regional studies that integrate diverse geological information in quests to find and produce hydrocarbons. Drilling has provided tests of subsurface forecasts, challenging interpretation strategies and structural models. This volume contains 19 papers that illustrate a diversity of methods and approaches together with case studies from Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. Collectively they show that appreciating diversity is key for developing better interpretations of complex geological structures in the subsurface – endeavours that span applications beyond the development of hydrocarbons.

Onshore fold-thrust belts are commonly perceived as 'difficult' places to explore for hydrocarbons and are therefore often avoided. However, these belts host large oil and gas fields and so these barriers to effective exploration mean that substantial unexploited resources may remain. Over time, evaluation techniques have improved. It is possible in certain circumstances to achieve good 3D seismic data. Structural restoration techniques have moved into the 3D domain and increasingly sophisticated palaeo-thermal indicators allow better modelling of burial and uplift evolution of source and reservoirs. Awareness of the influence of pre-thrust structure and stratigraphy and of hybrid thick and thin-skinned deformation styles is augmenting the simplistic geometric models employed in earlier exploration. But progress is a slow, expensive and iterative process. Industry and academia need to collaborate.

Orogenic belts and their shallow-soled fringes, the fold-thrust belts, are globally distributed in up to 20,000 km long mountain chains along the edges of the continents. Their locations, their geological origin in a mobile Earth, and their natural resources have drawn attention from the time of the Spanish and Portuguese global explorers to modernage geologists such as Emile Argand, Rein van Bemmelen, Albert Bally. Walter Bucher, Peter Coney, Augusto Gansser, A.M. Spencer, Hans Stille, Eduard Suess, and many others. Petroleum explorers have also accumulated and interpreted data from fold-thrust belts, but their collections have largely remained unpublished. The book is of interest to all geologists, resources engineers, technical consultants, and of course to the academic readership from all fields of the geosciences.

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