The United States granted the Serbian oil refining company NIS a license to operate until January 23, which allows it to resume production after a 36-day shutdown at the country’s only petrochemical plant.
Reuters reports this, cited by Ukrinform.
In October, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on NIS as part of a broad crackdown on the Russian energy sector. As a result, the Serbian company halted production at the Pančevo plant.
On Wednesday evening, Serbia’s Energy Minister Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic commented:
«The NIS company has received a license from OFAC to operate until January 23. This means that the Pančevo refinery will resume operations after a 36-day interruption»
– Serbia’s Energy Minister Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic
Context of the sanctions and next steps
Sanctions halted oil deliveries through the Croatian pipeline JANAF, leading to a shutdown at the Pančevo refinery.
JANAF on Wednesday evening said that the license obtained allows operation until January 23, 2026, which is a necessary condition for transporting oil for NIS.
Last week OFAC gave NIS until March 24 to negotiate the sale of its Russian stake. Russia’s Gazprom owns 11.3% of NIS’s shares, and its oil subsidiary Gazprom Neft, which is under sanctions, owns 44.9%. The Serbian government controls 29.9% of the shares, and the rest belong to minority shareholders and employees.
President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić said that Gazprom is in talks with Hungary’s MOL about a possible transfer of a controlling stake in NIS to it.
As previously reported, in January 2024 the United States expanded sanctions against the Russian energy sector. Then OFAC included NIS AD Novi Sad in the sanctions list, giving Gazprom Neft 45 days to exit its investment. Later the period was extended twice by 30 days.
After the sanctions were imposed, NIS faced serious difficulties in its operations. Over the year the United States postponed the sanctions on the company, but in early October they came into effect.