Hungarian MOL will increase oil deliveries to Serbia, but cannot make up for the amount it received from Croatia

(Patria) - Hungarian oil company MOL will increase deliveries to Serbia after US sanctions on the NIS refinery, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Friday.

"Since MOL plays an important role in supplying Serbia with crude oil and fuel, our Serbian friends can count on increased supplies from MOL," Szijjarto said, adding that this increase will not be able to fully compensate for the shortfall in deliveries from Croatia.

Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS), which is majority Russian-owned, did not receive a new delay on Thursday for Washington's sanctions imposed on the Russian energy sector. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of Finance in August, with a new one-month extension of the license, allowed the continued supply of crude oil to NIS until September 29, and then additionally until October 8.

The Adriatic Pipeline (Janaf), which transports oil to the refinery in Pančevo, the main supplier of the Serbian market with petroleum products, announced on Wednesday that it had obtained a license approving, until October 15 this year, participation in activities that are usual and necessary for the transport of oil, with the aim of completing all activities undertaken based on the valid crude oil transport contract.

Janaf, which delivers between two and three million tons of oil and generates around 40 million euros in revenue, signed a contract with NIS last year to transport 10 million tons of oil by the end of next year.

The application of the sanctions, imposed in January, has been postponed eight times so far. The sanctions against the Petroleum Industry of Serbia are part of a punitive package of US sanctions against the Russian energy sector, and NIS has been under the scrutiny of US sanctions since the beginning of this year because more than 55 percent of shares in that company are jointly held by Russian Gazprom Neft and Gazprom.