Workers are seen through a pipe at a construction site on the extension of Russia's TurkStream gas pipeline ahead of the visit of Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic and Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, in Letnitsa, Bulgaria on June 1, 2020.
The move opens the door for US economic and financial penalties to be imposed on any European and other foreign company over the Nord Stream 2 and TurkStream projects, including those that had been working on the pipelines before the passage of CAATSA and had been exempted from the penalties.The Trump administration has lobbied Europe, particularly Germany, to abandon the pipelines, which it believes will increase the continent’s dependence on Russian energy.
Already the threat of US sanctions has led one company that had not been covered by the grandfather clause to suspend its work on the pipeline.