New information arising from recent oil and gas exploration in the West Carpathians of eastern Slovakia

The West Carpathian territory extends from southwestern Slovakia through eastern Moravia to southern Poland. It is subdivided from its exterior to interior as follows: the Carpathian foredeep (a foreland basin), the Flysch Belt (a clastic accretionary prism), the Klippen Belt (a peculiar, narrow, extremely tectonically compressed belt, a remnant of the Pieniny ocean), the Central Carpathians (a complex area formed by several ocean-forming, passive margin and subduction processes amalgamated by Late Cretaceous tectonic movements), and the Central or Inner Carpathian Palaeogene and Neogene basins, which are in fore-arc and back-arc positions, accompanied by calc-alkaline volcanics, although only part of them can be considered as a volcanic arc.