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-2025, which may reduce the petrostate's reliance on expensive imported refined oil. Brazzaville 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 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.
It's not enough to be able to pick up a sword. You have to know which end to poke into the enemy.