The United States is trying to exert pressure on European creditors of the Nord Stream 2 project, threatening to impose retroactive sanctions on them. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded that Shell, Engie, Uniper, Wintershall and OMV should leave immediately or otherwise all their assets in America will be frozen. The new threats come amid Gazprom’s revved-up efforts to complete the project. However, it still remains unclear how the companies, which allocated 4.7 bln euro for Nord Stream 2 in loans, could avoid sanctions, Kommersant business daily writes.

In 2017, when Rex Tillerson headed the US State Department, he decided against imposing the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) against Nord Stream 2 because the project’s implementation had begun before this legislation was adopted. Managing Partner at Pen & Paper’s Moscow office Anton Imennov explained that Trump had empowered the Treasury Department with the right to impose CAATSA sanctions after coordination with the State Department. "Now the US has run out of the means of halting Nord Stream 2’s construction and that’s why Mike Pompeo had to immediately remove the clause on the application of Section 232 of CAATSA," the lawyer said. Therefore, "these are not new sanctions but well forgotten old ones."

Section 232 says that the sanctions target companies, which deliberately take part in building Russian energy export pipelines, provide investments or supply goods, services and technologies to the tune of over $1 mln in any single transaction or $5 mln in a 12-month period. A major blow could be dealt to five European companies sponsoring Nord Stream 2 - Shell, Engie, Uniper, Wintershall and OMV. Sources in these companies earlier said that in case of a real threat of sanctions they would be forced to leave. However, the management of all participants said that key investments in the project had been already provided.

In this situation it is unclear what the US wants from Gazprom’s partners. The application of retroactive sanctions would be an unprecedented step and in theory, these European companies could demand Gazprom return the loans and announce plans publicly to stop the implementation of Nord Stream 2. In this case, the project’s political positions will be weakened since it won’t be called European anymore, nevertheless the company still has the opportunity to complete the construction, the paper says.