Serbia to continue talks with Russia on situation around NIS on which USA imposing sanctions
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday that he will continue to discuss the future of the NIS energy company with Russian representatives, since there is nothing to talk about with the United States as U.S. sanctions on this company will take effect on Wednesday.
"Serbia will have to solve this problem, we will have to negotiate with Russia, and now we have nothing to talk about with the Americans," Serbian media quoted Vucic as saying.
At the same time, he expressed confidence that the European Union would also support U.S. sanctions, and therefore oil supplies from Croatia via the JANAF pipeline could be halted.
At the end of September, the U.S. postponed the imposition of sanctions on NIS by just a few days, until October 8. Previously, the U.S. postponed the application of sanctions against the Serbian energy company several times for a longer period.
NIS, being a subsidiary of Russia's Gazprom Neft, was included in the U.S. SDN List in early 2025. In this regard, Vucic said that the U.S. demands the complete withdrawal of Russian capital from NIS. At the same time, he said that the Serbian government transferred control of it to Gazprom Neft in 2008, and over the years, the Russian company has contributed to generating significant revenues to the Serbian budget, as well as the development of many projects.
Recently, due to the aggravation of NIS's issues regarding the extension of the postponement of U.S. sanctions, rumors about the possibility of new shareholders for the Serbian company have intensified. In particular, the Croatian authorities said that they expect a change in the NIS ownership structure in order to continue shipping oil to Serbia. Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said that U.S. sanctions would not allow JANAF to continue shipping oil to the Pancevo refinery, and Croatia hopes that the NIS ownership structure will change, which will allow oil transportation to resume.
Currently, the main co-owners of NIS are Gazprom Neft (44.85%) and the Serbian authorities (29.87%), while another 11.3% of NIS shares belong to JSC Intelligence, which is managed by Gazprom Capital LLC, which holds, among other things, the financial investments of the Gazprom Group. Gazprom directly owns one NIS share, and the Serbian company has minority shareholders, as well.
NIS is the only company in Serbia that explores for and produces hydrocarbons. The company has a large oil refinery in Pancevo and dominates Serbia's oil product market. NIS also has a chain of more than 400 filling stations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Romania.