NIS’s main refinery in Pancevo, just east of Belgrade, has relied on crude imports through a pipeline in neighboring Croatia. Anticipating that the ever-tightening sanctions may render the pipe unusable for NIS, Serbia has made plans to link to crude supplies from the Druzhba pipeline via Hungary.
The Biden Administration’s final sanctions on Russian oil trade were the most aggressive yet and sanctioned dozens of vessels that Russia used to ship the ESPO crude blend from its Far East port of Kozmino to China’s independent refiners.