site.btaHungarian Foreign Minister Szijjarto: Hungary, Serbia Should Speed Up Joint Oil Pipeline

Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said in an interview with Serbian national television RTS on Thursday that it is important for Serbia and Hungary to cooperate on energy issues. Szijjarto added that the construction of an oil pipeline between the two countries needs to be accelerated

During the interview, he announced that the Hungarian company MOL will increase its oil derivative supplies to Serbia further and confirmed that, should MOL be interested, it will certainly negotiate the purchase of Russia's majority stake in the Serbian oil company NIS.

"The question is whether the owners of NIS, the Russian side, want to do something like that. As a country, we have no role in this" said Szijjarto. 

In early January, the US announced that due to the war in Ukraine, it would impose sanctions on Serbia's only oil company, NIS, which is majority-owned by the Russian oil giant Gazprom. Washington demanded the complete withdrawal of Russian capital from the company, but just a week ago, Russia announced that it was ready to sell its stake. A few days ago, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced that he would give Russia 50 days to sell its majority stake in NIS. He noted that he knew of three potential buyers but did not name them.

The Serbian state owns 29.9% of NIS shares, while Gazprom remains the majority shareholder with 44.9%. At the end of September, Gazprom's affiliate company Intelligence, based in St. Petersburg, acquired an 11.3% stake in the parent company.

NIS was placed under US sanctions on January 10, which came into force on October 9 after being postponed eight times.

Since November 25, the Pancevo refinery near Belgrade has been operating in "silent mode" and will be shut down within hours if NIS does not receive an operating licence.