Shares of Hengli Petrochemical fell 10 per cent on Monday after the US last week imposed sanctions on the firm, one of China's largest independent refiners, for allegedly buying Iranian oil.
The US Treasury Department said on Friday that the refiner is one of Iran's largest customers for crude oil and petroleum products. The company denied it had any dealings with Iran in a statement on Sunday and said it would push to have them lifted.
Asked about the decision at a regular press conference on Monday, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs called for the US to stop misusing sanctions and said it would protect the rights of Chinese companies.
Hengli Petrochemical, which operates a 400,000 barrel-per-day refinery in the northeastern coastal city of Dalian, on Sunday said its refinery and petrochemical facilities were operating normally, having secured crude oil that can last more than three months of processing.
In the future, the company will continue procuring crude oil - combining its need for strategic stockpiling and market-based operations - and use the yuan to settle the trades, it added.
The Trump administration has already imposed sanctions on several other independent refiners, including Hebei Xinhai Chemical Group, Shandong Shouguang Luqing Petrochemical, and Shandong Shengxing Chemical.
These sanctions, blocking US assets of those designated and preventing Americans from doing business with them, have deterred some larger independent refiners from buying Iranian oil.
However, China still bought more than 80 per cent of Iran's shipped oil last year, data from analytics firm Kpler showed. Sanctions experts have long said that the independent refineries are somewhat immune to the full effect of US sanctions as they have limited exposure to the US financial system.
(Reporting by Lewis Jackson; Additional reporting by Chen Aizhu in Singapore; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Rashmi Aich and Thomas Derpinghaus)
