Vucic: Refinery in Pancevo to Shut Down on Dec. 2

Oil and gas company NIS (Photo: NIS)

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Nov. 30 that the NIS oil company's refinery in Pancevo would no longer operate as of Dec. 2 and that Serbia would have to "make do in different ways."

Vucic assured citizens that they could rest easy because the state would have "enough solutions and enough money." He announced that he would try additional talks with the Americans, but that he did not believe that they would change their decision, and said he had an important meeting on Dec. 1 to address the current problems and that Serbia faced "a tough fight."

Vucic also said that he did "not understand the logic or tactics" of the U.S. when it came to NIS, or why it would not extend the Serbian oil company's license to operate even though the Serbian state had provided guarantees that the ownership structure would be changed by the deadline named by the U.S., which introduced sanctions against NIS over its majority Russian ownership.

He said that Americans were telling him that they announced the sanctions eight or nine months ago. He stressed that Serbia was not the majority owner of NIS and could not make decisions on behalf of the Russians.