Xinhai Petrochemical

Xinhai Petrochemical is a mainland Chinese refinery named in MOFCOM Announcement No. 21 on 2 May 2026, which directed Xinhai and four sister refineries (Luqing, Jincheng, Shengxing, and Hengli) to disregard OFAC's Iran-related sanctions designations. Xinhai itself was not directly designated by OFAC; it was listed because it shared crude procurement relationships with the same IRGC-linked oil suppliers that prompted Hengli's designation on 24 April 2026.

The MOFCOM blocking order placed Chinese refineries in a structural position where compliance with OFAC would violate Chinese law, and compliance with MOFCOM would violate US secondary-sanctions law. Unlike Hengli, Xinhai did not receive its own OFAC General Licence and was not publicly named in any individual OFAC designation in the available record for this period. Its inclusion in the MOFCOM announcement reflects Beijing's strategy of bundling multiple refineries under the blocking order to signal systemic protection rather than case-by-case response.

Xinhai processes crude at a facility in Shandong Province, the main concentration of China's independent 'teapot' refineries. The scale of Xinhai's operations and its Iranian crude exposure are not confirmed in the publicly available briefing record; it appears in Lowdown coverage as one of the five refineries Beijing chose to protect, rather than as an independent news actor.