Center for Strategic Studies of Eurasia

    Commentary · Sep 24, 2026

    Serbia's refinery sale now waits on Washington, not Moscow

    Gazprom Neft has agreed to sell its majority in NIS to Hungary's MOL, and Belgrade has signed the governance terms. The deal, and Serbia's only refinery, still run on 30-day US licences.

    Strategic CompetitionEurope & Russia
    View of a large oil refinery plant with intricate pipelines in Trzebinia, Poland.
    Jakub Pabis / Pexels
    Contents

    Key takeaways

    • Gazprom Neft (44.85 per cent) and Gazprom-linked JSC Intelligence (11.30 per cent) together hold the 56.15 per cent of NIS that MOL agreed in January 2026 to buy; the Serbian state holds 29.87 per cent.
    • NIS reported a first-half 2026 net profit of 9.8 billion dinars and EBITDA of 35.1 billion dinars, refining 1.6 million tonnes while Brent averaged $92.6 a barrel.
    • Under the June 2026 shareholders' agreement, MOL committed to run Pančevo at the capacity of the four pre-sanctions years for at least 10 years.
    • EU member states accounted for 58.3 per cent of Serbia's external trade in 2025; trade with China reached €8.29bn, of which €6.42bn was imports.

    Serbia's only crude refinery has spent most of 2026 working on 30-day permissions from the US Treasury. On 24 September its owner, NIS, applied for another, because the current one expires on 30 September. The transaction meant to end this cycle, the sale of Gazprom Neft's controlling stake to Hungary's MOL, has been agreed in outline since January and in governance detail since June. It has not closed. The party that decides whether it closes is neither Belgrade, Moscow nor Budapest but the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in Washington. Serbia's balancing between the EU, Russia and China is usually described as a foreign-policy choice. In oil, it is now being settled as an asset sale under someone else's sanctions law.

    What the sanctions did to NIS

    NIS has been under US sanctions since January 2025. When its licences lapsed between 9 October and 30 December 2025, crude supply was disrupted and refining was temporarily suspended. The ownership that triggered the listing is straightforward. Gazprom Neft holds 44.85 per cent, JSC Intelligence, a Gazprom-linked vehicle, holds 11.30 per cent, and the Serbian state holds 29.87 per cent. The two Russian holdings together make up the 56.15 per cent that MOL has agreed to buy.

    The refinery matters far beyond the company. Pančevo supplies roughly 80 per cent of Serbian demand, and NIS accounted for 66 per cent of road fuel volumes sold in Serbia in the first half of 2026, although its share of retail alone fell to 43 per cent from 48 per cent a year earlier. The import alternative is thin. In July, record-low water on the Danube left barges running at 30 to 40 per cent of capacity, and fuel imports reached only about a quarter of monthly targets, according to a regional security review citing Reuters. A stopped refinery would have to be replaced by imports through a river that was, for part of the year, barely navigable.

    The company earns; the licence is the risk

    NIS is not a failing business. For the first half of 2026 it reported a net profit of 9.8 billion dinars, EBITDA of 35.1 billion dinars and operating cash flow of 16.6 billion dinars. It refined 1.6 million tonnes of crude and sold 1.4 million tonnes of products. Part of that is the market: Brent averaged $92.6 a barrel in the period against $71.7 a year earlier. The group also reported 101.4 billion dinars in public revenue liabilities, which is one reason no Serbian government can let it stop.

    The weakness is legal, not commercial. The current licence covers refining, crude imports, the operations needed for supply and certain financial settlements. It lasts a month. A company that cannot plan crude purchases beyond the next renewal carries risks that do not appear in a half-year profit figure, and those risks sit with the Serbian state as much as with the shareholders.

    What the MOL deal contains

    MOL signed a heads of agreement for the 56.15 per cent stake in January. President Aleksandar Vučić said at the time that the price to the Russian side was $900m and that Serbia had been ready to pay twice that. "The Russians will see their money," he said. He also said the state would raise its holding by 5 per cent and that the plant would have to run at a minimum of 70 per cent of capacity.

    The shareholders' agreement MOL and the Serbian government signed on 17 June set a different formula. MOL committed to run Pančevo at the capacity levels of the four years before sanctions and to keep it operating for at least 10 years. The June text is the later and more specific of the two, and it is the one MOL itself published. MOL's chairman, Zsolt Hernádi, said it "does not yet mark the end of the sale process". A sale and purchase agreement with Gazprom Neft still has to be finalised, and OFAC has to approve the transaction.

    The published summaries do not say exactly how the extra 5 per cent reaches the state. If it comes out of the Russian block, MOL would end with a bare majority of about 51 per cent and the state with about 35 per cent. That arithmetic is ours, not the parties', and the final structure may differ.

    Why Washington decides

    OFAC licenses both sides of the process: NIS's right to keep operating and MOL's right to negotiate with a sanctioned seller. An approval has to answer questions that neither Belgrade nor Budapest controls. They include whether Russian beneficial ownership ends in substance, how and where the purchase price is paid, and whether any Russian interest survives through supply or service contracts. Each 30-day renewal buys time for those answers. It also keeps a company with 101.4 billion dinars of half-year public revenue liabilities on a monthly lease.

    For Moscow the sale would convert an asset it cannot fully use into cash, if payment is licensed. For MOL it adds a refinery and retail network next to its Hungarian and Slovak assets. For Belgrade the goal is narrower: a plant that runs, a state stake with more say, and an end to renewals.

    The balance the deal does and does not change

    Serbia's economic weight lies with the EU. Member states accounted for 58.3 per cent of its external trade in 2025, when exports reached €33.1bn and imports €41.9bn, according to the national statistics office. China is the second pillar. Bilateral trade reached €8.29bn in 2025, about 11 per cent of the total, with €6.42bn of it Serbian imports. A free trade agreement was signed in October 2023, and Chinese firms own the Bor copper complex and the Smederevo steelworks. Russia's economic presence, by contrast, is concentrated in energy, and NIS is its largest single asset.

    Removing Russian control of NIS would therefore take away Moscow's most tangible corporate position in Serbia. It would not settle the question that holds up Serbia's accession talks. In July the Commission recommended opening Cluster 3 of the negotiations. Eight member states, the Netherlands, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Sweden and the three Baltic states, opposed it, citing the rule of law and insufficient alignment with EU foreign policy, including Serbia's non-imposition of sanctions on Russia. The cluster stayed closed when ministers met on 14 July. Those objections are about Belgrade's policy, not about who owns its refinery. A sale to MOL resolves the American problem while leaving the European one where it was.

    What to watch

    The first signal is whether OFAC grants NIS a licence beyond 30 September, and for how long. A longer licence would suggest confidence that the sale will close. A second is whether MOL and Gazprom Neft sign the sale and purchase agreement, and whether the payment route is licensed. A third is whether the 10-year operating commitment is carried into binding transaction documents. For Serbian and regional policymakers, the practical lesson of 2026 is independent of the outcome: fuel import and storage capacity that does not depend on one refinery, or on the level of the Danube, is cheaper than another year of monthly renewals.

    Sources

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