Dmitrij Mališev leaves "Petroleum Industry of Serbia"?

- The President of the Administrative Board of “Petroleum Industry of Serbia” (NIS), Dmitrij Mališev, may soon resign - the sources in NIS unofficially confirmed to FoNet and gave conceptual difference in opinions between him and the Director General of NIS, Kiril Kravčenko, as the reason for that.

The same sources, however, point out that we should wait and see whether Mališev’s resignation will be accepted.

On the other hand, electronic "Balkan magazine" announced that the cause for Mališev’s resignation was Gazprom’s dissatisfaction with his work. The sources of that magazine claim that the Russian who had been negotiating with the Government of Serbia about realization of the interstate energy agreement has, actually, been dismissed, but that his leave is going to be declared as resignation.

According to the same sources, Mališev has not been running the estimate of operations and the situation in NIS very well, so that the Russians were more than surprised with the state of NIS when they took over the company at the beginning of February 2009.

It seems that Mališev has not managed to correctly estimate political powers in the energy sector of Serbia as well. By establishing close friendly relations with the members of DSS who participated in the negotiations on the oil-gas arrangement, Mališev failed to notice new moments on the political stage in Serbia and the fact that the main players in the energy sector are now members of DS and SPS.

According to the announcement that the cabinet of Dmitrij Mališev sent to FoNet, the text published in "Balkan magazine" was written under the influence of those forces that were against the oil-gas agreement between Serbia and Russian Federation and against the contract on sale of NIS, which was successfully implemented by the President of the Administrative Board, Dmitrij Mališev. The information that Mališev plans to resign from his position was not denied in the announcement.

"Balkan magazine" claims that Mališev will submit official resignation on Friday, at the meeting of the Administrative Board of NIS, and it points out that it is also possible that Kiril Kravčenko will be dismissed from the position of the Director General, as well as that that mainly depends on the result of reduction of number of employees.

According to “Balkan magazine”, Kravčenko himself is now trying to motivate 2,000 employees in NIS to take severance pay – 750 EUR per year of work – and to leave the company voluntarily. As “Deloitte&Touche” estimated earlier, about 30 to 40% of 12,000 employees in the company are surplus manpower. People in the trade union say that Kravčenko would like the most to “see the back” of large number of advisors, former managers and unnecessary administration.

According to “Balkan”, Mališev should be replaced by someone from the staff of “Gazpromneft” who will work more seriously on improvement of the company’s works and preparations for functioning of NIS in the free market of oil derivatives.