NEW YORK, New York: After delisting three of China's biggest telecommunications companies this year - China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom - the New York Stock Exchange has announced it will formally begin delisting CNOOC Ltd., China's largest oil and natural gas producer, this month.

The NYSE decision comes on the heels of an updated guidance issued by the US Treasury Department on January 27, which has added CNOOC to the list of companies that are off-limits for American investors.

Shares of the Chinese state oil giant will stop trading in New York on March 9, in compliance with an executive order signed in November last year by former US President Donald Trump, Reuters reported.

In its final days, the Trump administration issued a series of sanctions targeting Chinese companies believed to be owned or controlled by the Chinese military to ramp up pressure on Beijing.

Earlier this year, the US Commerce Department had added CNOOC to its blacklist over China's "belligerent" actions in the South China Sea, prompting S&P Dow Jones Indices to delist the company, AFP reported.

At that time, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had accused CNOOC of acting as "a bully" for the Chinese military, to intimidate China's neighbors in the South China Sea, which has been at the heart of a regional territorial dispute that has festered for years.

While the NYSE has not disclosed when the delisting of CNOOC will be completed, it said China's state oil giant has the right to "a review of this determination by a committee of the board of directors of the exchange".

The exchange said it will apply to the Securities and Exchange Commission to delist CNOOC upon completion of all procedures, and include any appeal it receives to its application.