Montenegro’s Hydrocarbons Administration has issued a second tender worth approximately €11 million for the procurement of the first tranche of the country’s mandatory oil reserves – about 19.6 million litres of Eurodiesel to be stored at the oil terminal in the Port of Bar. The renewed procurement push comes after the initial tender launched earlier was cancelled in mid-January when the only bid received from Jugopetrol was deemed non-compliant. The new tender remains open until 13 March 2026 and is being conducted under urgent procedure to ensure Montenegro meets European Union requirements to establish compulsory fuel reserves as part of closing EU accession Chapter 15 on energy.
Crucially, the tender documentation retains a strict prohibition on the fuel’s origin: suppliers must demonstrate that the Eurodiesel does not derive from the processing of Russian crude oil, and also that it is not supplied by any entities subject to restrictive measures or sanctions imposed by Montenegro, the UN, the EU, the United States or the United Kingdom. Bidders are required to provide evidentiary documentation such as Safety Data Sheets, certificates of quantity and quality issued at the port of loading, and certificates of origin before delivery to prove compliance with these origin criteria.
The deadline for fuel delivery has been moved from April to June 2026, with scoring incentives tied to the delivery window within that month: suppliers proposing delivery in the first ten days of June receive the highest score, with declining points for later delivery periods through June 30.
Because Montenegro’s state-owned storage facilities at Montenegro Bonus are not yet adapted for reserve storage, the diesel will initially be stored in Jugopetrol’s facilities, which belong to the Greek Hellenic Group, under a contract signed in December. That contract allows for potential termination if reserves are not eventually received under the agreed conditions.
The tender process reflects Montenegro’s broader legal reforms following adoption in December 2024 of the Law on Security of Supply of Petroleum Products, which mandates the establishment of mandatory oil reserves and forms a key element of the country’s compliance framework for EU accession. Private oil companies including Jugopetrol, Ina Crna Gora and Petrol Crna Gora have already procured their share of required reserve volumes, while the state’s procurement remains ongoing.
The retention of the non-Russian origin clause comes against a backdrop of global shifts in energy supply dynamics and geopolitical pressures; around the same period, the Russian government introduced a temporary ban on fuel exports through July 2026, adding complexity to sourcing non-Russian diesel on international markets.
