The New York Stock Exchange on Friday decided to begin formal delisting of Chinese state oil giant CNOOC Ltd based on an executive order signed by former U.S. President Donald Trump in November last year, Reuters said in a report on Thursday.
The Trump administration moved to prohibit U.S. investments in certain Chinese companies that Washington said were owned or controlled by the Chinese military in an effort to ramp up pressure on Beijing.
The blacklisting of CNOOC by the US government on December 3 has raised the stakes for China’s oil and gas companies amid worsening trade and diplomatic relations between the two countries, S&P Global Platts had said in a report in December.
CNOOC is the country’s largest LNG importer and the Chinese national oil company with the highest percentage of its portfolio located overseas, often in partnership with international oil companies.
This is the case offshore Guyana where CNOOC has a 25 percent stake in the prolific Stabroek block where operator ExxonMobil has found around 9 billion barrels of oil equivalent since 2015.
According to S&P Global Platts, the blacklist, aimed at Chinese companies with links to the country’s military establishment, is also the first time one of China’s big three national oil companies has been directly targeted, the other two being PetroChina and Sinopec.
