Dubravka Đedović Handanović said in St. Petersburg on Tuesday that Hungarian oil company MOL had asked the US Office of Foreign Assets Control for an additional 30 days to finish negotiations to buy Gazprom Neft’s Russian stake in Serbian oil company NIS. "Mr Djukov confirmed that active negotiations between Gazprom Neft and MOL are continuing and that MOL submitted a request to OFAC today for additional time to complete the talks. The current deadline expires on 6 June, and they have requested a 30-day extension. MOL CEO Zsolt Hernádi also confirmed this to me yesterday," she said.
The request lands against a tight timetable for Serbia: the immediate OFAC deadline targeted by MOL expires on 6 June, and NIS’s operating licence runs out on 16 June. That combination — a U.S. licensing clock and a separate domestic licence expiry — is why Serbia is watching the talks closely this week.
Finance Minister Siniša Mali told reporters on Tuesday that "progress had been made in the negotiations," that a response to MOL’s OFAC request was expected on Tuesday or Wednesday, and that he still hoped the latest round of talks could be concluded by the end of the week. Those statements supply the working timetable both companies and the Serbian government are using as they wait for OFAC’s decision.
Context for those timetables stretches back months: the United States sanctioned NIS on 9 October, 2025 because of its majority Russian ownership, and on 19 January the MOL Group announced it had agreed with Gazprom Neft on a binding framework to acquire a 56.15 per cent stake. The OFAC waiver or licence that MOL seeks is the immediate legal hinge that would let a sale proceed while the company remains under sanctions.
But the picture is not uniformly optimistic. In mid-May President Aleksandar Vučić said the negotiations "were not progressing well" and warned that Serbia would consider purchasing the Russian stake itself if no agreement could be reached. That public scepticism sits uncomfortably beside Mali’s assurances of movement and his expectation of a quick reply from OFAC.
Officials have also identified concrete technical and operational knots still to tie up. Remaining outstanding issues include how the Pančevo refinery will be operated under new ownership and several technical details related to day-to-day management — matters that go beyond paperwork and into the mechanics of running NIS if the sale clears regulatory and sanction hurdles.
What happens next is the practical question for companies and the Serbian state: OFAC must decide whether to grant the 30-day extension before the 6 June deadline, and NIS will seek an extension of its operating licence ahead of the 16 June expiry. If OFAC approves MOL’s request, negotiators get a month to resolve the Pančevo and technical issues and to finalise transfer terms. If OFAC refuses or delays a decision, Serbia and NIS face a compressed, legally fraught window to secure the operating licence or to consider alternative steps Vučić floated in mid-May.
