The Trump administration is placing economic sanctions on a major China-based oil refinery and roughly 40 shipping companies and tankers involved in transporting Iranian oil.
The move, announced on Friday, makes good on the Trump administration’s threat to impose secondary sanctions on companies and countries that do business with Iran. It is also part of the Republican administration’s overall ramped-up campaign to cut off Iran’s key source of revenue – its oil exports.
Concurrently, the US this month imposed a physical blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf waterway that is crucial to global energy supplies.
These sanctions come just a few weeks before US President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping are due to meet in China.
Included in Friday’s sanctions is Hengli Petrochemical’s facility in the port city of Dalian, which has a processing capacity of roughly 400,000 barrels of crude oil per day, making it one of the biggest independent refineries in China.
The US Treasury Department says Hengli has received Iranian crude oil shipments since 2023 and has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the Iranian military.
