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The measure immediately angered America’s European allies, where the $25 billion pipeline promised a stable supply of gas at a time when nations were still reeling from the oil shocks of the 1970s. But it was the oil and gas lobby that fought within the United States.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents major oil and gas companies and pipeline manufacturers among countless other industries, warned that the sanctions “will worsen our international reputation for commercial credibility”. a letter to the White House. The pipeline will actually “give some leverage over the Soviets” to Western Europe, said Richard Lesher, the group’s chairman. He later told The Washington Post.

After intense lobbying, the House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee voted to lift the sanctions, despite a letter from Secretary of State George P. Shultz declaring that such laws would “seriously cripple” the administration’s ability to deal with the Polish crisis.

This war forty years ago marked the beginning of massive gas infrastructure construction in Europe. Today, an extensive network of pipelines stretching from Russia to Europe supplies about 40 percent of the continent’s gas.

This network gave Moscow leverage over its European neighbors. In 2009, when Russia and Ukraine fell into a diplomatic dispute, Russia shut off its gas supplies and left tens of thousands of homes without heat. More than a dozen people froze to death, mainly in Poland, before Russia reopened its pipelines.

Experts say the abundant gas flow from Russia has consequences beyond security and slows Europe’s efforts to combat climate change by switching to renewable sources. The European Union said it now aims to cut gas imports by two-thirds and rapidly increase wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy.

“Obviously they could have done this before, but there was no incentive,” said Margarita Balmaceda, a professor of diplomacy and international relations at Seton Hall University and an adjunct at the Harvard Ukraine Research Institute. Access to Russia’s gas is “definitely slowing the transition to renewable energy,” she said.