Republican congressmen urge the US Treasury not to extend NIS waivers

Two Republican congressmen in the US House of Representatives, Joe Wilson and Keith Self, sent a letter on Friday (September 25) to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, opposing the extension of sanctions relief for the Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS), as Danas reports.

In the letter, as The Hill writes, the two lawmakers ask Bessent to “reconsider the extension of all additional temporary licenses that would allow NIS to continue operating despite US sanctions related to Russian ownership.” Russian owners hold 56.15 percent of NIS ownership, of which 44.85 percent belongs to the Russian state company Gazpromneft.

NIS submitted on September 24 to the US Treasury a new license request that would allow it to continue operational work, Radio Free Europe reports today. The current license of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) expires on September 30. The US administration imposed sanctions on NIS in early 2025, with a Russian majority in ownership, to prevent Russia from using energy revenues for the war in Ukraine. For more than a year the sanctions have been postponed in turn, and since the Hungarian company MOL emerged as an interested buyer, the OFAC work license has been renewed periodically.

Wilson and Self express concern that the exemptions allow NIS to drag out negotiations for the sale of the Russian share in the company, according to The Hill’s article. In January, Hungarian MOL announced it had reached an agreement with Gazpromneft to take over the majority share in NIS, but it has not yet been finalized. The letter also adds that “Serbia continues to maintain close political and economic ties with Russia and, unlike most European countries, has not imposed sanctions on Moscow after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.”

Wilson himself wrote today on the X network that the time has come to stop extending exemptions for NIS and to enforce sanctions against “the largest oil company in Serbia under Russian ownership,” as Danas reports. He called his friend, “war criminal (Vladimir) Putin,” and said (Aleksandar) Vučić “has had enough opportunities to diversify energy sources and free the company from Russian ownership, but did not,” adding that “Vučić is pulling America by the nose.”