WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is stepping up sanctions targeting Iran’s oil trade with China, including on an oil refinery linked to Yemen's Houthi militants.  

The State Department on Thursday sanctioned an oil storage terminal in the Chinese port of Huizhou that it said was buying and storing Iranian crude from a sanctioned vessel. The Treasury Department also blacklisted Luqing Petrochemical, a refinery based in China's Shandong province allegedly purchasing and refining half a billion dollars’ worth of Iranian crude oil from vessels linked to the Houthis and the Iranian Ministry of Defense of Armed Forces Logistics. It is the first time the United States has sanctioned a small private refinery in China known as a “teapot” refinery. 

Nineteen entities and vessels were sanctioned by the Treasury as being a part of Iran’s “shadow fleet” of tankers that supply teapot refineries, including Luqing Petrochemical, by disguising oil shipments.

Exports to China — by far Iran’s biggest purchaser of crude oil — have helped keep the Iranian economy afloat since the Trump administration’s 2018 withdrawal from the nuclear deal closed off Iran’s ability to export oil to Europe, South Korea, Japan and other international customers. US officials say Iran employs a range of evasion tactics to circumvent sanctions and conceal shipments bound for China, including a network of intermediaries and environmentally risky ship-to-ship transfers in open waters.