The Russian owners of Serbia’s oil company NIS have agreed to sell their 56.15% stake and are in talks with a potential buyer, Serbia’s energy minister said on November 19, as Belgrade races to meet US demands for a full Russian exit from the company.

Serbia has one week to present a restructuring plan after Washington made clear that sanctions imposed on NIS will remain in place until Russian ownership is fully removed. The sanctions, introduced on October 9 after months of temporary waivers, have raised concerns over stability of supplies because NIS operates Serbia’s only oil refinery.

Gazprom Neft owns roughly 45% of NIS, while another 11.3% is held by a St Petersburg-based firm called Intelligence, recently spun off from the Gazprom group. Serbia owns 29.8%, with the remainder held by minority shareholders.

“We are very involved and informed about the negotiations … not on a daily but on an hourly basis,” Energy Minister Dubravka Dedovic Handanovic said. “It is in our vital interest that NIS continues to operate successfully, because it is absolutely necessary for the energy stability of our country.”

She said the government would not yet reveal the potential buyer. “These are business talks between serious companies. Until the most important details are defined, it is not serious to discuss them publicly,” she said.

NIS has again requested an extension of its operating licence from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), filing a new application on November 18 to ensure continued crude oil deliveries. The minister said Belgrade was now waiting for Washington’s response. “We need the refinery to continue working and to secure new crude supplies via Janaf as soon as possible,” she added.

Oil deliveries to Serbia have been halted for 43 days, though the government says consumers have not felt the impact thanks to emergency planning.

The financial stakes are high for Belgrade. When speculation over possible sanctions emerged in late 2024, NIS’s market capitalisation on the Belgrade Stock Exchange was about €1bn – a figure widely considered unrealistically low due to the market’s limited liquidity and minimal turnover.

A sale to a credible European buyer such as Hungary’s MOL would be the cleanest outcome, officials say, satisfying US demands while avoiding fiscal strain for Serbia. MOL has signalled interest, and Hungary maintains good relations with Washington, making the company a plausible candidate. But US approval remains uncertain. Washington has previously blocked asset sales involving sanctioned Russian firms, including a recent attempt by Lukoil to sell to commodities trader Gunvor.

NIS said on November 19 that ownership talks were ongoing and that it had again asked OFAC to extend its work licence to keep the company operating.