The 2014 US sanctions on Russia significantly hurt financing for the Yamal LNG project.

As gigantic as they are, the logistical and technological challenges are not the only ones. There is also politics: The site was launched in late 2013, a few months before the sanctions against Russia began. That’s a hiccup worth $27 billion.

“When the sanctions happened in July 2014, we had advanced well financially with standard contracts with American banks and American lawyers. But we had to start over again from scratch,” recalls Jacques de Boisséson. The Washington sanctions, decided upon in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis, did not affect the project directly because gas was not included — although the French company’s Russian partner, Novatek, was targeted, as one of its main shareholders, Gennady Timchenko, was close to Vladimir Putin.