Brenda Shaffer in Newsweek
"By focusing on the companies that supply the vessels that lay deep-sea pipelines, the bill has potential to be very effective. It targets one of the only aspects of the project that Russia needs foreign technology for," Brenda Shaffer, an energy expert at Georgetown University, told Newsweek.
"However, as with most sanctions' legislation, the devil is in the details. Congress frequently passes all sorts of sanctions, but most are discretionary sanctions, where essentially the executive can decide to apply them or not," Shaffer continued. "Accordingly, if the administration wants to improve relations with Moscow, it most likely will not apply the sanctions."