BELGRADE, February 9. /TASS/. Serbia hopes it will have some extra time after its oil major NIS (Neftna Industrija Srbije) referred an inquiry for a sanctions postponement to the US Department of the Treasury to try to find a solution concerning the structure of its stakeholders, Serbian Prime Minister Milos Vucevic said.

"I don’t have information but I expect a response very soon as we don’t have much time. We have America’s demands and Russia’s position. What matters the most is that we have uninterrupted supplies of oil and oil products," Serbia’s Radio and Television quoted him as saying.

"We want the US Department of the Treasury to postpone the sanctions so that we have more time to find an optimal solution - Serbia with Russia, Serbia with American, and even, Russia with America, which would be the very beneficial for their relations," he said.

"We hope for Washington’s positive response to the inquiry for a postponement so that we have more time to find the best option for NIS. And I would like to tell those who are calling on us to snatch NIS from Russia that Russians vote on issues of Kosovo and Metohija, the Republic of Srpska, and resolution on Srebrenica at the United Nations Security Council. We cannot grab their assets and ask for their support at the same time," he added.

According to Serbia’s mining and energy ministry, NIS has officially asked the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to look at postponing the sanction for 90 days so that it could find a solution to avoid the sanctions.

On January 10, the US Department of the Treasury put Russia’s Gazprom Neft and its CEO Alexander Dyukov, as well as more than 20 its subsidiary structures engaged in the production, refining and selling hydrocarbons, with NIS being among them, on its sanctions list. NIS is one of southeastern Europe’s largest vertically integrated energy systems. Its activities include prospecting for and production of oil and gas, oil refining, selling oil products, generating and selling electricity, implementing petrochemical projects. Its production facilities are located in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. Its majority stakeholders are Gazprom Neft (50%), Serbia (29.87%), and Gazprom (6.15%).