It is said that on Thursday, December 19, the Trump administration renewed a waiver for companies to loosen transactions with the Dalian unit of a Chinese tanker company it had sanctioned in September for allegedly transporting Iranian oil, Reuters reports.
Namely, in September, the US Department of Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed six sanctions on six Chinese companies, amongst them COSCO, for transporting oil from Iran in defiance of sanctions set in place in November 2018. Sanctioned COSCO affects the shipping industry and those oil companies and traders who have entered agreements with.
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Reuter reports that the waiver, effective as of the 4th of February 2020, allows activities and transactions “ordinarily incident and necessary to the maintenance or wind down of transactions,” such as the offloading of non-Iranian crude oil involving COSCO’s Dalian Shipping Tanker Unit.
Last week, the Trump Administration implemented new sanctions against Iran, targeting an Iranian shipping network and airline, as was announced by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Pompeo informed that the designated companies include the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and its China-based subsidiary, E-Sail Shipping. OFAC also designated three Mahan Air general sales agents (GSA) based in the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong over alleged proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
