An official said Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan went for Moscow on Wednesday to press for the building of a long-delayed multibillion-dollar gas pipeline in partnership with Russian corporations.

Khan’s visit to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and discuss matters like as economic cooperation comes just hours after a number of Western countries imposed further sanctions on Russia for its military deployment in eastern Ukraine.

“Both nations are keen to start the project as soon as possible,” a spokesman for Pakistan’s energy ministry told Reuters of the Pakistan Stream gas pipeline. He revealed that Khan’s visit will be accompanied by Energy Minister Hammad Azhar.

The 1,100-kilometer (683-mile) North-South gas pipeline was first agreed upon in 2015, and was to be funded by both Moscow and Islamabad, with a Russian company constructing it.

Khan voiced worry about the situation in Ukraine and the likelihood of fresh sanctions, as well as their impact on Islamabad’s developing collaboration with Moscow, in an interview before to his trip.

The project, which would supply imported Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) from Karachi on the Arabian Sea coast to power facilities in Punjab’s northeastern area, is unclear how the recent sanctions would effect it.

As Pakistan’s reliance on imported LNG rises in the face of diminishing gas supplies, the project is critical for the country’s power industry.

Because of previous penalties, the pipeline project has already been delayed.

“One of the reasons this North-South pipeline suffered was that the firms we were talking with turned out to be sanctioned by the US,” Khan told Russia Today on Tuesday.

“The issue was finding a corporation that wasn’t sanctioned,” he explained about the endeavor.