Geology and petroleum geochemistry of Miocene strata in the Polish and Ukrainian Carpathian Foredeep and its Palaeozoic–Mesozoic basement

This thematic issue of Annales Societatis Geologorum Poloniae contains a set of papers presenting results of a special research project entitled "Petroleum exploration prospectives and hydrocarbon potential of the Miocene strata and Mesozoic–Palaeozoic basement in the borderland area of Poland and Ukraine", led by research teams from the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków and the Polish Geological Institute – National Research Institute in Warsaw. The objective of this paper is determination of the geological and geochemical conditions, 1-D and 2-D modelling of petroleum processes and petroleum systems and their influence on the prospectives of hydrocarbon exploration of the Miocene strata in the Polish and Ukrainian Carpathian Foredeep and its Palaeozoic–Mesozoic basement. In particular, a coherent model of geological structure of the area, based both on the synthesis of the earlier published data and on new results of palynological studies of the Upper Precambrian and Lower Palaeozoic, is given. New data on microfacies of the Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous strata and on sedimentology, geochemistry and micropalaeontology of the Middle Miocene rocks are presented.