Public debate in Serbia over the possible acquisition of Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS) retail assets by Hungary’s MOL Group has intensified in recent weeks, with particular focus on whether such a transaction would concentrate too much power in the domestic fuel market. A closer look at market structure, legal thresholds, and the competitive landscape shows that fears […]
South-East Europe’s 2026 power price formation will be dominated by a three-variable stack that has become more binding than any single national policy lever: the European gas price level that sets the marginal fuel cost for the region’s gas fleets, the CO₂ price that lifts the thermal floor in every EU-linked bidding zone and therefore
Thermal power in South-East Europe in 2026 will not be determined by a single “coal versus renewables” narrative. It will be determined by how much hydropower the region actually receives, how high the CO₂ price floor sits across European-linked markets, how reliably coal mining can deliver lignite tonnage to power plants, and how much cross-border
Hydropower will be the decisive swing factor for South-East Europe in 2026 because it is simultaneously energy, seasonal storage, and the region’s cheapest source of flexibility. The market has increasingly learned that the same installed hydro fleet can produce two radically different economic outcomes depending on inflows: in a wet year, hydro compresses day-ahead prices,
Serbia’s gas market is no longer a purely contractual story about volumes bought from one supplier and delivered through one route. It is becoming a system defined by three constraints that now dominate every economic outcome: how much gas Serbia can physically import through alternative corridors, how much it can withdraw from storage during winter
South-East Europe’s gas market has stopped behaving like a collection of national utilities buying pipeline molecules and passing them through regulated tariffs. It is turning into a corridor-and-liquidity system where the marginal price is increasingly set by LNG access, storage withdrawal rates, and cross-border interconnector capacity rather than by any single long-term contract. The region
Hungary’s expansion in Serbia is no longer a set of isolated deals. It is increasingly legible as a two-track strategy that uses MOL on the hydrocarbons and retail side, and MVM Group on the power, engineering, and system-integration side, with Serbia positioned as both a demand hub and a transit corridor between Central Europe and the wider Balkans. The
South-East European refining is not defined by refinery nameplates alone. It is defined by who controls crude access, who can finance inventories through cycles, and who owns the corridors that physically move oil. In this system, refineries behave less like isolated industrial plants and more like nodes inside a politically and financially constrained logistics network.
South-East Europe’s refining system and Serbia’s turning point under a MOL takeover Read More »
When the CBAM lens that has already reshaped thinking on green electricity is applied rigorously to natural gas, the conclusion is stark. Gas does not behave like a neutral transition fuel in a CBAM-constrained export economy. It behaves like a structural risk variable whose price volatility, emissions intensity, and perception by EU buyers increasingly determine
Gas under CBAM: Why Serbia’s transition fuel becomes a structural competitiveness risk Read More »
Serbia still has a narrow but realistic window to position itself as a near-shore green manufacturing hub for EU supply chains. Geography, labour costs, industrial depth, and trade access are not the binding constraints. The binding constraint is energy credibility—specifically, whether Serbia can deliver reliable, scalable, and auditable green electricity to energy-intensive exporters under CBAM
Serbia as a near-shore green manufacturing hub — what must change before 2030 Read More »
