Austria's OMV has pointed to the important role the project would play in ensuring safe supplies and competitiveness in Europe, while Germany's Uniper once again expressed confidence that pipeline construction would be completed.
The company stressed that Uniper was not affected by the US sanctions as the financier of the project. It also reaffirmed having fulfilled its financial obligations.
"We are constantly monitoring current political developments and are also in contact with the German government in this regard. We support approaches for a constructive dialogue between Germany, the EU and the new US administration with the aim of averting unilateral economic sanctions," Uniper added.
"OMV is one of the lenders of the Nord Stream 2 project. We see this as an economic project that is important both for the security of supply and competitiveness in Europe," the Austrian company said.
On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that companies involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline construction were at risk of facing sanctions and should abandon their work on the pipeline immediately.
Nord Stream 2 is a 1,230 km, $10.5 billion pipeline project between Russia's Gazprom and several major Western European energy companies. When completed, the pipeline will double the 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year capacity of the existing Nord Stream network.
Despite overwhelming support in Germany and Austria, among others, the US has been threatening the countries involved in the project with sanctions to discourage the states that are part of Nord Stream 2's construction from pursuing the project, claiming that the pipeline threatens European security.
Washington has also been trying to force Russian natural gas out of Europe and to sell its own more expensive liquefied natural gas.
