Hungarian oil and gas titan MOL swells in size with Russian stake grab in Serbia’s NIS

Hungarian oil and gas company MOL on Monday said it signed a binding heads of agreement with Russia’s Gazprom Neft on the acquisition of a 56.15pc stake in Serbian peer NIS.

Purchase agreement to be signed before April

The parties aim to sign the sales and purchase agreement by March 31, 2026. The completion of the transaction requires the approval of the United States of America’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). “The transaction…can ensure the long-term, stable operation of the Pancevo refinery and the related business units, as well as the uninterrupted supply of the region’s energy markets,” MOL said.

MOL Group is in negotiations with ADNOC, the national oil company of the United Arab Emirates, to join the owners of NIS as a minority shareholder, while MOL retains majority ownership and control, MOL chairman-CEO Zsolt Hernádi said. “MOL is committed to working together with the Serbian government to further strengthen the security of supply in Serbia and in the region,” he added.

Servicing Serbia, Romania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina

NIS’s refinery in Pancevo has an annual capacity of close to 4.8 million tonnes. NIS also operates nearly 400 service stations across Serbia, Romania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In its upstream portfolio, NIS has around 173 million barrels of oil equivalent 2P reserves with daily crude and gas production in Serbia exceeding 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. It also holds exploration licences in Romania and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Serbia also boosts it stake in NIS

Hungarian oil and gas company MOL has reached an agreement with Russia’s Gazprom Neft to acquire a majority stake in Serbian peer NIS, Serbian Minister of Mining and Energy Dubravka Dedovic Handanovic said on Monday.