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Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said on Friday that he expects the main points of the agreement between the Serbian Oil Industry (NIS) and the buyer, the Hungarian company MOL, to be finalized by January 23.
He told Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) that the MOL group will be NIS's new partner.
"MOL, together with NIS and the state of Serbia, has also worked on a letter to OFAC and on securing an operating license for additional crude oil supplies. I believe that if we go with these issues to OFAC and he will approve it ," Vučić said.
He added that if approval is not granted by the United States, NIS's operating license will be revoked again.
The US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) began implementing sanctions against NIS on October 9 due to the participation of the Russian state-owned company Gazprom Neft, with the aim, as Washington announced, of preventing Russia from using energy revenues for the war in Ukraine.
The US condition for removing NIS from the sanctions list was the removal of Russian companies from ownership.
Shareholders in NIS are: state-owned company Gazprom, its subsidiary Gazprom Neft and shareholders from St. Petersburg own 56.15% of the shares, Serbia 29.87%, while slightly less than 14% is owned by smaller shareholders.
Due to the embargo and the inability to import crude oil, the Pančevo Refinery, the only one in Serbia and the most important facility of NIS, was closed on December 2.
On January 1, NIS announced that the US Treasury Department had granted the company a special license allowing NIS to resume operational activities by January 23.
" The license allows the resumption of oil processing at the refinery, the import of crude oil and the carrying out of transactions necessary for ensuring supply and technical maintenance ," NIS announced.
Vučić told RTS that on January 5, NIS could pay for 85,000 tons of oil stored in Omiš, Croatia, and immediately bring it to Serbia, as well as order a tanker with 140,000 tons.
He added that 100,000 tons have already been produced in Serbia, and that the Pancevo Refinery can operate at full capacity from January 20.
With the start of US sanctions, transportation through the JANAF pipeline from Omiš in Croatia to Pancevo was stopped, as NIS imported oil from Croatia by sea. On January 1, JANAF announced that OFAC had granted the company a license to continue transporting non-Russian oil until January 23.
Nafta Industrija Srbije was sold to Gazprom in January 2008, within the framework of the Russian-Serbian intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in the oil and gas sector, for 400 million euros.
So far, there has been no official information on the current value of the Russian share of NIS.
Serbia is dependent on Moscow for energy, as NIS supplies 80% of the domestic market with petroleum products. Serbia also buys 80% of its natural gas for citizens and businesses from Russia.
Belgrade and Moscow have close political, economic, and military relations.
Serbia has been a candidate for membership in the European Union (EU) since 2012, but has not joined Brussels' sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
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