BELGRADE (Reuters) -Hungary’s MOL oil company is considering buying Gazprom’s 11.3% stake in Serbian oil firm NIS which is under U.S. sanctions, the Belgrade-based NIN weekly reported on Thursday, citing sources.
Russia’s Gazprom Neft holds 44.9% and Gazprom has an 11.3% stake in NIS, which operates Serbia’s only oil refinery. The Serbian government has 29.9% of the shares, while the remainder belongs to small shareholders and employees.
The purchase would make Gazprom Neft a minority stakeholder, the NIN report said, adding that the deal could be discussed in Budapest on November 15.
A MOL spokesman declined to comment on “market rumours”.
Earlier this week, Serbia’s Energy Minister Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic said the two Russian companies sent a request to the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, stating that they are ready to cede control to a third party.
Officials from NIS could not be immediately reached for a comment.
The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) initially placed sanctions on Russia’s oil sector in January, but for NIS, they were postponed several times and finally came into effect on October 8. Banks have stopped processing NIS payments, and Croatia’s JANAF pipeline stopped delivering crude oil.
(Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade; additional reporting by Gergely Szakacs in Budapest;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
