BELGRADE, July 7. /TASS/. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic expects negotiations on Hungarian energy group MOL's buyout of Russia's stake in the Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS) to be successfully concluded soon.
"I hope we will soon put an end to this saga surrounding MOL and NIS. I believe we can resolve it with our Russian and Hungarian friends. It's not easy, it's not simple. I can't tell you what all the problems are — it is simply wrong, and they cannot be discussed during negotiations. But people should know that it's not easy at all," Vucic told the opening of the Conference of Speakers of Parliaments of EU Candidate Countries in Belgrade.
On January 19, Gazprom and Hungarian energy company MOL announced the signing of a letter of intent to sell a stake in Serbia's NIS. Serbian authorities announced an increase in their stake in the company by 5%, which will allow Belgrade to influence certain decisions at the shareholders' meeting. MOL is also in talks with the UAE's ADNOC to join NIS as a minority shareholder.
The NIS owners are forced to sell their assets because they came under US sanctions. In January 2025, the US Treasury Department added the Serbian company to the sanctions list along with its majority shareholder, Gazprom Neft. After several delays, the restrictions came into effect on October 9 of that year. On November 11, 2025, the Serbian Ministry of Energy announced that NIS's Russian owners had notified the US of their willingness to transfer control of the company to a third party.
