Serbian president says no more talks with US on oil sanctions
As a final US sanctions waiver expired, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said efforts will focus on negotiations with Moscow to address restrictions on the country’s Russian-majority owned oil company NIS, declaring there is ‘nothing to be discussed with the Americans anymore’.
The comments came after NIS said the US Treasury Department had granted it a final one-week sanctions waiver last week, delaying full enforcement until 8 October, and marking the seventh temporary extension since sanctions were initially imposed in January.
Vucic told reporters, ‘In any case, we will discuss everything with the Russians, but now there is nothing to be discussed with the Americans anymore. They have got what they wanted,’ the official Tanjug news agency reported.
Croatia’s oil pipeline operator JANAF, which supplies 80% of NIS’s crude oil needs, said last week it also received a licence valid until 8 October, adding it would apply for an extension through its US attorney and the Croatian government.
Vucic warned that the impending sanctions present both logistical and financial challenges for Serbia. ‘The Europeans will back the US sanctions. I am quite certain JANAF will stop supplying oil after a short period of time. Therefore, we have that physical problem,’ he said.
‘There is another, perhaps bigger problem – a financial and banking one, because no bank in the world will want to bypass US sanctions,’ Vucic explained. ‘Great – we have one state-owned and one privately-owned Serbian bank, which can keep going for a day or two, three or five days longer, but they, too, will be unwilling to collapse or disappear as a result of the sanctions, so we will have countless problems.’
The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control initially placed sanctions on Russia’s oil sector on 10 January and gave Gazprom Neft 45 days to exit ownership of NIS. The company has since received six temporary waivers before the latest extension.
NIS, in which Gazprom Neft owns a 44.9% stake, Gazprom holds 11.3% and the Serbian government 29.9%, operates Serbia’s sole oil refinery in the town of Pancevo, just outside Belgrade. The facility has an annual capacity of 4.8 million tonnes and covers most of the Balkan country’s needs.
Vucic said last month that Serbia was ‘collateral damage’ in the tense relationship between the United States and Russia. ‘We will pay a high price because the Russians are the majority owner of NIS,’ he said.
