Hormuz Fee Lifts Crude Costs Just Before NIS Deadline

Brent crude trades near $84 a barrel, and US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he will impose a fee on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz has raised the cost of every tanker carrying crude toward European ports. For the Pancevo refinery, the only crude processing plant in Serbia, that means costlier imports at the very moment the company’s operating room from Washington is running out.

The overlap of two calendars makes the situation delicate. The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) extended the license of Naftna Industrija Srbije until July 31, 2026, letting the refinery keep processing crude. That same deadline coincides with the rise in the price of the raw material on the world market, so pressure on refining margins and on domestic fuel prices arrives at the same time as the uncertainty over ownership.

Why does costlier crude hit Pancevo in particular?

Pancevo covers more than 80 percent of domestic diesel and gasoline needs, with capacity of 3 to 4 million tons a year. The refinery runs on imported crude, and every added shipping cost across Hormuz feeds into the purchase price of a barrel. With Brent near $84 and the announced tanker fee layered on top, the import component rises before the crude even reaches the plant on the banks of the Danube.

The effect is already spilling over to the pumps. Published fuel prices set eurodiesel at up to 220 dinars (about 1.88 euros) and 95-octane gasoline at up to 196 dinars (about 1.67 euros) a liter, valid until July 17. Unlike the global market, where the price of a barrel swings from day to day, the domestic pump price changes in administrative cycles, so costlier crude reaches consumers with a lag, but it reaches them. A costlier July import thus sets the base for price pressure in the cycles ahead, regardless of how the license question is resolved.

Who takes over NIS before the deadline

While crude grows more expensive, an ownership negotiation runs in the background that is meant to lift NIS off the sanctions list. Hungary’s MOL has signed a framework agreement for 56.15 percent of NIS and is at the same time negotiating with Abu Dhabi’s ADNOK over its entry as a minority partner, with MOL keeping the majority. The Russian majority stake was the reason the sanctions were imposed, so the solution is being sought precisely in a change of the shareholder structure that would satisfy the US administration.

The arrangement, however, has not yet been closed. A framework agreement is an intention, not an executed transfer of ownership, while the talks with ADNOK over a minority stake have yet to take final shape. Each new 30-day license effectively confirms that talks are ongoing but that there is still no shareholder agreement to remove NIS permanently from the OFAC list. For a buyer, that means entering an asset whose supply side depends on imports at ever higher prices, and for the Serbian state a short-term relief that the refinery is running, with the open question of what follows after July 31.

The deadline, the imports, and the ownership are converging in the same week. If no agreement on the shareholder structure is reached by the end of July, a new license extension will be needed, while the costlier crude remains, in the meantime, the factor that sets fuel prices at the pumps. Will MOL and ADNOK close the arrangement before costlier imports and the license expiry squeeze the Pancevo refinery’s margin further?