Serbia and Hungarian oil and gas group MOL have signed a shareholders' agreement regarding the future management of Serbia's Russian-controlled sole refiner NIS, which is under U.S. sanctions, energy minister Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic said on Tuesday.
The agreement, which will come into force only if MOL completes the acquisition of a 56.15% Russian-owned stake in NIS from Gazprom Neft and obtains all necessary approvals for the transaction, defines the future relations between MOL, a prospective majority owner of NIS, and Serbia, a minority shareholder, Djedovic Handanovic said in a press release.
Djedovic Handanovic said the agreement provides for the acquisition of an additional 5% stake in NIS by Serbia and guarantees that NIS's 4.8 mt/y refinery in the northern city of Pancevo will continue operating for at least the next ten years at the same capacity as in the ?last four years before the U.S. sanctions were introduced.
The deal also ensures uninterrupted operations at NIS subsidiaries, including petrochemicals producer Petrohemija, and strengthens the influence of Serbian representatives on NIS's board of directors in key decision-making processes.
MOL CEO Zsolt Hernadi cautioned that this agreement does not represent the end of the process for the acquisition of the majority stake in NIS and that an agreement with the seller, as well as an approval from the U.S., is necessary.
MOL signed a binding heads of agreement with Gazprom Neft to buy the 56.15% stake in NIS in January, a year after the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions on NIS over its Russian ownership. The Hungarian energy major has until June 16 to complete the talks, but has taken steps to push back this deadline, according to the press release on Tuesday. Meanwhile, NIS last week requested a special licence from the U.S. Treasury, which would allow it to continue operating after June 16, when the current licence, issued in April, expires.
NIS is 44.85% owned by Gazprom Neft. Serbia's government holds a 29.87% stake, and St. Petersburg-based Intelligence, a company indirectly controlled by Gazprom, has 11.3%. The remainder belongs to a number of minority shareholders.
Apart from Serbia, where it operates the 4.8 mt/y Pancevo refinery, NIS is active in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, and Romania. It owns 388 active retail sites, with 331 of them in Serbia, and employs more than 13,500 people.
(SeeNews, June 16, 2026)
