BEIJING, Dec 22 (Reuters) \u2013 China\u2019s foreign ministry on Monday said the United States\u2019 seizure of another country\u2019s ships was \u200da serious violation of international law, after the U.S. intercepted a China-bound oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast.<\/p>\n
Venezuela has the right to develop relations with other countries, China\u2019s foreign ministry \u200cspokesperson Lin Jian said at a \u200cdaily press briefing, adding that China opposes all \u201cunilateral and illegal\u201d sanctions.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a second oil tanker in international waters \u200boff the Venezuelan coast, days after President Donald Trump announced a \u201cblockade\u201d of all \u200dsanctioned oil tankers entering \u200band leaving Venezuela.<\/p>\n
The tanker, Centuries, \u200bloaded in Venezuela under the false name \u201cCrag\u201d and \u200dwas carrying some 1.8 million barrels of Venezuelan Merey crude oil bound for China, documents showed.<\/p>\n
The crude was bought by Satau Tijana Oil Trading, one of many intermediaries \u200dinvolved in Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA\u2019s sales to Chinese independent refiners, the documents showed.<\/p>\n
A White \u200dHouse spokesperson \u200dsaid the \u201cfalsely flagged vessel\u201d carried \u200bsanctioned oil and was part \u200bof \u2060Venezuela\u2019s shadow fleet.<\/p>\n
The Venezuelan government called \u200cthe tanker interception a \u201cserious act of international piracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
China is the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude, which accounts for roughly 4% of its imports.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Christopher Cushing and \u2060Kate Mayberry)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIJING, Dec 22 (Reuters) \u2013 China\u2019s foreign ministry on Monday said the United States\u2019 seizure of another country\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-363513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}