Abstract: In order to further improve the national oil and gas mining rights management system, new measures and innovative practices in line with the reform of national oil and gas system since the restructuring of Sinopec are systematically summarized. Furthermore, problems in the management of oil and gas mining rights are analyzed and the targeted suggestions are proposed. By analyzing the changes in exploration area of Sinopec in three stages, i.e., “application first, registration according to law”, “reduction of exploration rights area in proportion to insufficient investment”, and “mandatory reduction speculated in Document No. 7”, the innovative practices are summarized, including strengthening the nationwide strategic selection of exploration areas and actively acquiring new mining rights, strengthening the linkage between mining rights and reserves and internal circulation of mining rights responding to new situations, and establishing an evaluation system for acquiring new mining rights at reasonable prices. These measures have ensured a virtuous cycle of Sinopec’s petroleum exploration and development work and ushered in a new level of proven oil reserves of 2×10⁸ t in 2022. However, in mining rights management, the competitive transfer and mandatory reduction policy upon expiration of exploration rights result in the rapid reduction of exploration rights area of petroleum enterprises. A large number of mining rights blocks have been acquired by weaker enterprises, which are challenging to achieve substantial exploration progress and delay the exploration and development of mining rights blocks. As a result, it is recommended to increase the proportion of technical bidding documents in the competitive transfer process to ensure that petroleum enterprises with strong strength and responsibility obtain sufficient exploration area.