Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that the state, if it needed to, would temporarily takeover the majority ownership of oil company NIS from Russian GazpromNeft. The takeover would take effect while sanctions are in force and after the sanctions are lifted the company will be returned to Russians.
President Vucic explained that certain mediators and traders of the Iraqi Kirkuk oil do not want to do business with majority Russian owned companies. He stressed such that kind of an agreement with Gazprom would only be made if necessary and that the state has no intentions to permanently nationalize NIS.
He said that the ban on the export of diesel and petrol fuel would be extended for another seven days, because, due to the limited price, it was not cost-effective for other importers of that fuel to import it, so the local market needed to be supplied with that fuel. When the price is regulated, nobody wants to import and lose money and all retailers are waiting to buy fuel from NIS refinery.
Another potential problem, is that it is not certain that the refinery will be able to obtain spare parts, because it is under sanctions.
