Bajatovic: There will be more delays of US sanctions on NIS

BELGRADE - Srbijagas CEO Dusan Bajatovic said on Thursday he expected another delay of US sanctions on Serbia's Russian-majority owned oil company NIS.

"There will be more delays of US sanctions, which is good for Serbia, but we cannot expect more than 30 days because that is bureaucracy. They (the US) know what you can do in 40, 45 days... NIS has an 80 pct share of the Serbian market, you can hardly substitute that with imports from other countries," Bajatovic said on Pink TV in a comment on a NIS request for another deferral of sanctions.

Following a change of the ownership structure in the company, it should be taken off the Specially Designated Nationals list to launch the procedure of lifting the sanctions, but that will not be the case, he said.

"If you read the document on sanctions by the US regulatory body OFAC, we have changed the NIS ownership structure, and Gazprom now has an 11 pct stake, Gazprom neft - which is under sanctions - has around 46 pct, nearly 30 pct is property of the state of Serbia and the rest are small shareholders," Bajtovic said.

He said the sanctions on NIS were political in nature and had been introduced by the Biden administration in a last-ditch attempt to make it more difficult for current US President Donald Trump to establish peace.

Recently, the Serbian government has written to the US administration in support of the NIS request.

The sanctions were deferred in late February for the first time.