LONDON — With tensions escalating between Russia and the West, and Moscow facing the possibility of tougher economic sanctions, few European executives may feel caught in the middle more than Gerhard Roiss.

Mr. Roiss is chief executive of the energy company OMV, Austria’s largest industrial corporation, which has a long, tangled history with Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled gas giant. And just last month, he appeared at a Vienna news conference with Gazprom’s chief to sign a deal — over potential European Union objections — to make Austria the endpoint of the South Stream pipeline project that the Russian company is leading, as a way to bypass Ukraine.

Given the furor over Russia’s presumed role in last Thursday’s shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, it is now even less certain whether that pipeline will ever be completed. But in an interview in London a week before that disaster, Mr. Roiss defended the pipeline deal.

Mr. Roiss emphasized that he and OMV were intent on creating an additional route for gas to reach Europe in case of disruptions in Ukraine, rather than being driven by a profit motive. It “would be wrong” he said, to think that OMV wanted “to make money out of the crisis.”