The southwestern Qaidam Basin is a major oil-producing region in the Qinghai Oilfield. The stratigraphy of the Tertiary reservoir strata in the SW Qaidam Basin has not been standardized, thus hampering petroleum exploration. Based on previous work and synthesizing lithostratigraphic, well log, paleontological, and seismic data, we propose a sequence stratigraphic framework for the Tertiary of SW Qaidam Basin, with the goal to provide a standard for regional stratigraphic subdivision and correlation.