The structure of Circum-Tibetan Plateau Basin-Range System and the large gas provinces

Northward subduction of the Cenozoic Tethys ocean caused the convergence and collision of Eurasia-Indian Plates, resulting in the lower crust thickening, the upper crust thrusting, and the Qinghai-Tibet uplifting, and forming the plateau landscape. In company with uplifting and northward extruding of the Tibetan plateau, the contractional tectonic deformations persistently spread outward, building a gigantic basin-range system around the Tibetan plateau. This system is herein termed as the Circum-Tibetan Plateau Basin-Range System, in which the global largest diffuse and the most energetic intra-continental deformations were involved, and populations of inheritance foreland basins or thrust belts were developed along the margins of ancient cratonic plates due to the effects of the cratonic amalgamation, crust differentiation, orogen rejuvenation, and basin subsidence. There are three primary tectonic units in the Circum-Tibet Plateau Basin-Range System, which are the reactivated ancient orogens, the foreland thrust belts, and the miniature cratonic basins. The Circum-Tibetan Plateau Basin-Range System is a gigantic deformation system and particular Himalayan tectonic domain in central-western China and is comparable to the Tibetan Plateau. In this system, northward and eastward developments of thrust deformations exhibit an arc-shaped area along the Kunlun-Altyn-Qilian-Longmenshan mountain belts, and further expand outward to the Altai-Yinshan-Luliangshan-Huayingshan mountain belts during the Late Cenozoic sustained collision of Indo-Asia. Intense intra-continental deformations lead ancient orogens to rejuvenate, young foreland basins to form in-between orogens and cratons, and thrusts to propagate from orogens to cratons in successive order. Driven by the Eurasia-Indian collision and its far field effects, both deformation and basin-range couplings in the arc-shaped area decrease from south to north. When a single basin-range unit is focused on, deformations become younger and younger together with more and more simple structural styles from piedmonts to craton interiors. In the Circum-Tibetan Plateau Basin-Range System, it presents three segmented tectonic deformational patterns: propagating in the west, growth-overthrusting in the middle, and slip-uplifting in the east. For natural gas exploration, two tectonic units, both the Paleozoic cratonic basins and the Cenozoic foreland thrust belts, are important because hydrocarbon in central-western China is preserved mainly in the Paleozoic cratonic paleo-highs and the Meso-Cenozoic foreland thrust belts, together with characteristics of multiphrase hydrocarbon generation but late accumulation and enrichment.