The Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) has been ruled by Denis Sassou Nguesso since 1979, with a five-year interval after 1992. He has ties to China and Russia. France has helped prop up his regime. The bumpy ten-hour drive from Brazzaville, the capital, to Oyo, Mr Sassou Nguesso's home town, passes through village after village without electricity; the street lights start some ten kilometres from Oyo.
The Republic of Congo is a major producer of crude oil but for more than four decades had only a single oil refinery. A new Chinese-built refinery near the port city of Pointe-Noire was expected to start operations by end of December 2025, which may reduce the petrostate's reliance on expensive imported refined oil. Brazzaville, the capital, is some 500km inland from Pointe-Noire.
A Russian-built pipeline is planned to connect the Pointe-Noire refinery to Brazzaville. The project was hashed out between Russia and the ruling Sassou Nguesso family. A Russian company, ZNGS Prometey LLC, would take a 90% stake in the pipeline and be paid a guaranteed fee for every barrel of fuel it transports for 25 years. Dmitry Islamov, Russia's deputy energy minister, has said it will create a "sanctions-resistant petroleum products distribution channel" and secure Russia's status as a regional "strategic energy-security partner". Congolese activists worry the pipeline could be used to launder revenue from sales of oil transported by Russia's shadow fleet, used to bypass Western sanctions since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russian records show that bankruptcy proceedings were initiated in November 2025 against ZNGS Prometey because of unpaid taxes. Russia has a history of broken promises in Africa: RT Global Resources pulled out of a $4bn Ugandan oil-refinery project in 2016; a deal with Lukoil in Nigeria in 2019 has not produced tangible results; and an agreement with Rosatom dating to 2009 to build nuclear-power plants in Nigeria has gone nowhere.
If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.