Commercial quantities of oil and gas have been discovered in several fold and thrust belts. Around the world, these zones, which for several years have been the main target of oil exploration, are arousing new interest with the development of new ideas and techniques. The principal problems in finding oil in such complex areas are to accurately locate the structural traps and determine if they lie in a potentially productive area. This volume contains a selection of papers which focus mainly on: geodynamics of thrust belts and associated basins; new approaches to compressional structures: physical models, balanced cross sections; case histories of thrust belts and foreland basins.