Hungary to Novi Sad Oil Pipeline: Work Starts by 2026

The oil pipeline from the Hungarian border to Novi Sad now has a firm construction timeline: work starts by the end of 2026, and the build itself should take about two and a half years. Minister of Mining and Energy Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic said as much on August 26 on the Urank program on K1 television.

Until now, officials had only said that work should begin by the end of the year, without estimating how long construction would take. The minister gave that estimate for the first time today: roughly two and a half years from the start of work to the pipeline entering service.

“The plan was for construction to start in the fall, but we’ll see, given all the procedures underway. The goal is certainly for work to start before the end of the year,” Djedovic Handanovic said.

The original fall deadline slipped because of administrative procedures that, she said, are still ongoing. The minister did not specify which procedures were involved, but she held to the goal of breaking ground before 2026 ends.

Why Serbia needs a second route

The section of pipeline on Serbian territory runs more than 100 kilometers, from Horgos to the Novi Sad Terminal, including the terminal itself. Planned capacity is about 5.5 million tons of crude oil a year. On the Hungarian side, the pipeline connects to the route carrying the Druzhba pipeline, giving Serbia a second supply source alongside JANAF.

Djedovic Handanovic explained that the existing route through the Adriatic pipeline, JANAF, stays in operation, but the new route can also function on its own.

“We’ll keep the supply through JANAF, but the pipeline with Hungary can also work independently. What matters for energy security, and we did the same with gas pipelines, is not relying on a single supply route. That means if that route fails you for technical, economic, political or any other reason, you have other options, you can supply from several directions, from several suppliers, on different terms and at different prices,” Djedovic Handanovic said.

Dependence on imports, the minister said, cannot be reduced to zero, since Serbia does not produce enough oil and gas of its own. As an example of how quickly a supply route can change, she pointed to Europe’s shift from Russian to American gas after a cutoff that, in her words, left Europe in a “very ungrateful position.”

The investor and the price tag

The tender for building the pipeline was issued in late December by the state owned Transnafta ad Pancevo. Sources differ on the exact investment figure: Kurir puts it at about 17.4 billion dinars including value added tax, which at the current mid exchange rate of roughly 117.3 dinars to the euro comes to about 148 million euros. Earlier reports on the project cited a total investment of around 150 million euros and a total route length of 128 kilometers, meaning they counted the section on the Hungarian side too, not just the Serbian stretch of just over 100 kilometers between Horgos and Novi Sad.

Pipeline news lands amid uncertainty over NIS

The minister used the same appearance that day to address another energy topic: the license the United States administration issues for Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS) to keep operating. She said it would not be known until the last moment whether the license would be extended past August 28, since completing the transaction over the takeover of NIS requires banking institutions to get approval from the US administration. The Serbian side, she said, has finished its part of the negotiations.

Against that backdrop, the pipeline announcement carries extra weight: while NIS waits on a license from Washington, the state owned Transnafta is building a route that depends on neither JANAF nor the outcome of the NIS negotiations.

If the announced timeline holds, work on the ground should start before the end of this year, and the pipeline, counting roughly two and a half years of construction, could be finished sometime in 2029.