US sanctions against the Russian oil company NIS, which is owned by Russia, have created serious obstacles to acquiring a crude-oil tanker. These restrictions risk leaving Serbia’s sole oil refinery without feedstock or forcing its closure due to a shortage of oil.
According to experts, Serbia has only a few days to avoid idling the Pančevo refinery. Estimates suggest that the blocked oil shipment could sustain the plant’s operation for about 10 days.
Supply and Logistics Details
The Maran Helios tanker, which carried about one million barrels of Kazakh oil for NIS, arrived at the Croatian port of Omisälj on October 9. However, sources familiar with the situation say that the oil never reached Serbia.
The Croatian pipeline operator Janaf said that on October 8 it sent the entire volume of oil from the company’s system to NIS. After that, supplies to Serbia were no longer planned, which indicates that the Kazakh oil purchased by NIS never ended up in the country.
Meanwhile, on October 22, the United States officially imposed sanctions on the Russian oil companies Rosneft, Lukoil, and their subsidiaries – a list of 34 entities. U.S. President Donald Trump expressed hope that such steps would force Russia to act more reasonably, and urged allies to support a hardline sanctions policy against Russia.
The Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Olha Stefanishyna, welcomed the U.S. Department of Justice’s sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, noting that this is the first time in the tenure of the 47th U.S. president, Donald Trump, that Washington has decided to impose full blocking sanctions against key Russian energy companies.