Two licenses issued by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to the Oil Industry of Serbia (NIS) are set to expire at midnight tonight. These include the license allowing NIS to continue its operational activities and the license permitting the continuation of negotiations between MOL and Gazprom Neft.
In April, OFAC set June 16 as the expiration date for NIS’s operational license. Last week, it also extended the license covering negotiations between MOL and Gazprom Neft until the same date, after it had previously been valid through June 6.
OFAC has repeatedly postponed deadlines for completing negotiations on the sale of the Russian stake to MOL, first to May 22, then June 6, and now June 16.
Meanwhile, Serbia’s Minister of Mining and Energy, Dubravka Đedović Handanović, stated that Serbia and the energy company MOL had resolved all outstanding issues and reached a compromise regarding the Shareholder Agreement tied to the Hungarian company’s potential acquisition of a majority stake in NIS.
Đedović Handanović said that if Gazprom Neft reaches an agreement with MOL on the sale of its 56.15 percent stake in NIS, and if OFAC approves the transaction, Serbia will purchase an additional five percent of NIS shares.
“Regarding the operation of the Pančevo Refinery, the Hungarian side has committed to ensuring that it continues operating as before, with at least the same average annual capacities as in the four years prior to the introduction of U.S. sanctions, when NIS was performing very successfully,” the minister stated, adding that the refinery’s future operation had been one of the key issues for the Serbian side.
On June 10, NIS submitted a request to OFAC seeking a new special license that would allow the company to continue carrying out its operational activities without disruption after June 16.
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Source:: Danas; Foto: Printscreen N1