It was part of the "gas in exchange for pipes program", and the Soviet-controlled bank "Ost-West Handelsbank" was opened in Frankfurt on 1 March 1973 to support the project.

In 1981-1982, contracts were signed with compressors and pipes suppliers Creusot-Loire, John Brown Engineering, Nuovo Pignone, AEG-Telefunken, Mannesmann, Dresser Industries, and Japan Steel Works.

[5] The pipeline runs from Siberia's Urengoy gas field via a compressor plant at Pomar in Mari El to Uzhhorod in Western Ukraine.

[16][17] The foreign ministers of the European Economic Community called extension of the American sanctions illegal and sent a formal note of protest.

[15] From the European perspective, participation in the pipeline project was seen as an opportunity for the depressed steel and engineering industry in Europe and as a way to diversify from the OPEC oil supplies.

"[20] The efforts by the US to prevent the construction of the pipeline, and its export embargo of supplies needed to build it (1980–84), constituted one of the most severe transatlantic crises of the Cold War.

On 15 December 1983, a fire broke out at a compressor station in Urengoy, destroying electronic monitoring devices and control panels, but no one was injured.

[27] According to the Russian government owned radio station Voice of Russia terrorist threats against the pipeline were made by Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh in March 2014.

[28] Another section of the pipeline exploded in the Poltava region on June 17, 2014, one day after Russia limited the supply of gas to Ukrainian customers due to non-payment.

[30] The 1987 James Bond film The Living Daylights uses an inspection gadget in the pipeline as a plot device to smuggle a KGB defector to the West.