For more than two weeks, motorists across the Republic of Congo have queued for hours, only to leave service stations empty-handed. The shortage has gripped Brazzaville, the economic capital Pointe-Noire, and towns deep in the country’s interior.
The disruption has revived a long-running debate over who controls the import of refined petroleum products, and whether the state’s dominant role has become a liability rather than a safeguard for ordinary consumers.
In a published opinion piece, commentator Jean-Clotaire Diatou framed the question bluntly, asking why the country does not simply dismantle the monopoly held by the Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo, the state oil company known as the SNPC.
A Shortage That Hits Wallets First
The everyday cost of the crisis is visible at the curbside. Informal sellers, nicknamed “Kadhafis,” have stepped into the gap, offering gasoline from plastic containers when official pumps run dry across the main urban centers.
Their prices tell the story. According to Diatou, a liter sold by these street vendors fetches between 1,500 and 2,000 CFA francs. The regulated price at an official station, by comparison, sits at just 775 CFA francs.
That gap, roughly double or more the official rate, falls heaviest on the workers, traders, and commuters who depend on affordable transport. Public transit, in particular, absorbs the strain when fuel becomes both scarce and expensive.
Why the SNPC Sits at the Center
At the heart of the debate is the structure of the import market itself. The SNPC controls almost the entire importation of refined petroleum products, leaving little practical space for other players to bring fuel into the country.
The legal framework is not, in theory, closed. Diatou notes that the law allows licensed private importers to participate in the trade, a provision meant to widen supply beyond a single state actor.
In practice, however, that opening narrows quickly. The activity remains, in his words, “very tightly regulated,” a level of oversight that limits how much private importers can actually contribute when shortages strike.
Refining Capacity Falls Short
The bottleneck is not only about imports. It also reflects what the country can produce on its own, and here the numbers leave a clear shortfall between domestic output and national demand.
The Coraf refinery, the existing facility, covers only about 70 percent of the country’s needs. National demand, according to the tribune, runs to roughly 60 million liters each month, a volume the plant cannot meet alone.
That structural deficit was supposed to ease. A second refinery, planned for Pointe-Noire and expected to come online by December 2025, has yet to begin operations, leaving the supply equation unchanged for now.
The Case for Breaking the Monopoly
For Diatou, the diagnosis points toward a single remedy. He argues for “breaking the state monopoly” and opening the refined fuel sector to genuine competition, rather than patching shortages each time they recur.
He is not alone in pointing that direction. The commentator observes that the International Monetary Fund has regularly recommended liberalizing the sector, lending an external dimension to a debate often framed in purely domestic terms.
The stakes, as he presents them, extend beyond the pump. Without such a reform, he warns, the national economy will keep suffering from intermittent crises, with public transport among the first sectors to feel the disruption.
A Recurring Test for Policymakers
The current episode underscores a pattern rather than a one-off failure. Shortages that surface, recede, and return suggest a supply chain stretched thin, vulnerable to any single point of pressure within the import and refining system.
For decision-makers, regulators, and the citizens waiting in line, the question raised by the tribune is whether the existing model can absorb future shocks. The answer, in Diatou’s reading, depends on the appetite for opening a tightly held market.
Until that question is settled, the gap between the official price and the street price remains the most immediate measure of the crisis, a daily reminder that the debate over the SNPC’s role is far from academic for Congolese households.
The coming months, and the fate of the delayed Pointe-Noire refinery, may determine whether the country addresses the underlying capacity gap or continues to manage shortages as they arise.
