Albania offers a classical section across a folded belt. The Apulian platform (Sazani zone) with its Mesozoic platform carbonates form the foreland. Proceeding towards the east, the Ionian zone with its basinal Mesozoic-Paleogene sequence and a thick Neogene foredeep sequence was deformed during the Middle to late Miocene and the Pliocene. The main decollement level is at the base of the Upper Triassic evaporites. The Ionian zone is the center of the oil production of southern Albania. Much of the production is from structures involving Neogene clastics with minor production from Mesozoic carbonate reservoirs. Source beds in the Ionian zone occur in the Triassic, the Jurassic and the Cretaceous.

Farther east, the Kruja zone involves Cretaceous platform carbonates. Where folded during the Middle Oligocene, the Kruja zone is overlain by the complex west-vergent flysch nappes of the Krasta-Kucali zone. The flysch nappes extend underneath the great allochthonous lower Mesozoic ophiolite complexes of the Mirdita zone. The ophiolites were emplaced during the Upper Cretaceous. Finally, the Korab zone to the east appears also to be underlying the great Mirdita complex. It consists of Paleozoic (Silurian-Permian) schists and carbonates, overlain by Permo-Triassic redbeds and evaporites, and Mesozoic carbonates. The Korab units may envelope part of the Mirdita ophiolites.

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