Hungary Says Negotiations on Purchase of NIS Progressing Quickly

Peter Szijjarto (BETAPHOTO/HINA/Dario GRZELJ)

Hungarian oil company MOL and Russian Gazprom Neft have made considerable progress in their negotiations on the sale and purchase of the Russian majority stake in Serbian oil company Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS) and there is a real chance that a key agreement will be reached in the next few days, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said on Jan. 16.

"When that happens, and I hope it will happen in one to three days, a request will immediately be sent to U.S. OFAC. The Hungarian government is diplomatically supporting MOL in purchasing Gazprom Neft's stake in NIS, we will certainly provide diplomatic aid and support for this procedure to be successful," Szijjarto told the Serbian Broadcasting Corporation (RTS).

Szijjarto further said that the reason for the Hungarian government's diplomatic support to MOL was that in the event the company successfully purchased the majority stake in NIS, the oil markets of Slovakia, Hungary and Serbia would act in an integrated way through MOL, which would put that region in the kind of favorable position from the aspect of energy security it had never been in before.

A license from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control would enable NIS to continue processing oil, importing crude and carrying out financial transactions needed for secure supply and technical maintenance until Jan. 23, while the deadline for the negotiations on the sale of the Russian stake - the condition for the lifting of U.S. sanctions against NIS - has been extended until March 24.