The lithostratigraphic column of the Outer Albanides records a long geodynamic evolution. It began with a Liassic rifted margin made up of tilted fault blocks, carbonate platforms, and euxinic basins (Posidonia Schist) and evolved into a Paleogene flexed foreland, part of which inverted during the Neogene. The complex Mesozoic paleogeography accounts for the distribution of potential dcollement levels and lateral changes in structural styles.

Petroleum plays are numerous and result from the occurrence of various source rocks with contrasting burial histories and migration pathways. To document the respective timing of thrusting, petroleum generation, and trapping, that is, the critical timing of Albanian petroleum systems, we have reconstructed the kinematic and thermal evolution of two representative regional transects that cross the Peri-Adriatic Depression and the Kruja Zone, as well as the Ionian Basin, in the northern and southern segments of the Outer Albanides, respectively.