The State Department has cut most of its oil industry advisers as it relaunches an influential advisory panel on international sanctions, sidelining a major energy industry segment at a time when oil sanctions on Iran have become a top policy concern.

The changes were made official soon after sanctions were re-imposed on Iran’s energy industry earlier this month.

A State Department official said the sanctions panel was restructured to reflect a more diverse array of stakeholders, which could explain why they were shaking loose members from an over-represented industry.

“The subcommittee was recently restructured in a manner that reflects a wide array of sanctions practitioners that actively advise the Bureau of Economic Affairs on global sanctions policy issues,” the official told the Washington Examiner in an email.

The sanctions panel is a subcommittee under the larger Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy that includes officials from a wide variety of industry groups, companies, and other experts. Even the larger group lost a significant number of advisers, with major oil companies no longer represented as they were in the past.

The panels advise the secretary of state and bureau deputies on a range of international economic concerns, including sanctions policy. Earlier in the year, the economic panel had rung alarm bells about the need to look at the effects of secondary sanctions on Iran's energy industry, according to minutes obtained by the Washington Examiner.

U.S. sanctions on Iran had been a top issue for the panel in the wake of Trump’s decision to cancel the Obama-era nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic. Secondary oil sanctions went into effect on Nov. 5, making countries subject to U.S. enforcement and penalties if they continue to buy oil from Iran.

The sanctions subcommittee had included a number of representatives from the oil industry in the run-up to re-imposition of sanctions. But the industry now appears to have been sidelined, with the exception of the major oil company Chevron, according to an updated members list.

Shell and the American Petroleum Institute were removed in favor of experts from several think tanks, according to an updated list of panel members posted to the State Department website last week.

A Chevron spokesman said the company was invited to join the sanctions subcommittee back in 2014 “in an advisory role to provide a business community perspective.”

Jay Thompson, Chevron’s head of federal affairs, will continue to serve on the sanctions panel as the industry's lone representative.

The reformed panel will be co-chaired by recently appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary David Peyman, the State Department’s sanctions chief, and Jeff Schott of the Peterson Institute for International Economics think tank.

The sanctions subcommittee met the week before the most recent full advisory committee meeting in October, which was right before the energy sanctions went into effect, the State Department official added. This was the first meeting of co-chairmanPeyman, the official said.

The sanctions panel now includes 18 members, including five members from prominent Washington law and consulting firms such as Hogan Lovells and Steptoe and Johnson.

Big banks like Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo are also on the committee, along with manufacturing and aerospace giants GE and Boeing.