Abstract:

 Contraction structural stress resulted from plate to plate collision causes the formation of orogenic belts and contractive basins forming in the one side of the orogenic belt or the interior of it. Under the effect of the contractive stress, various structural styles are formed, including imbricate thrusting, complex thrusting, multiplelevel detachment thrusting, and composite thrust structures with various attitudes. The paper describes the fold structural styles related to contractive thrusting: faultbend folds, faultpropagation folds, and detachment folds, and proposes that we should not only consider the nonanticline structure as the main exploration targets, but also pay more attention to the anticline in future exploration because 80%90% of total oil production came from anticlines, especially for contractive structures with larger closure area and high amplitude that are the basic geologic conditions for the formation of larger and medium reservoir.

Key words: contractive fractured structure, seismic interpretation, anticline, nonanticline structure, petroleum structural style