Georgia's economy is booming on Russian oil - and, oddly enough, Togo is cashing in, too

Georgia's economy grew by eight per cent in July, and if you're wondering what's behind the surge, the answer is the same one that's been doing the heavy lifting all year: oil. 

Not Georgian oil, of course - the country barely produces any - but Russian crude, shipped in, refined on the Black Sea coast, and sent back out into the world as "Georgian" petroleum products.

Along the way, it's turned the small West African nation of Togo into one of Georgia's biggest trading partners, which is the kind of statistic nobody saw coming a year ago.

Geostat, Georgia's national statistics office, put average growth for the first seven months of 2026 at 7.9 per cent. The head of the agency, Gogita Todradze, pointed to the refining industry as the main driver once again, specifically the Kulevi refinery on the Black Sea coast, run by Black Sea Petroleum - the same plant that has just been named in the EU's 21st sanctions package over its use of Russian crude.

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The numbers behind the growth are striking, even if you don't want to get lost in them. Crude oil imports have exploded this year, almost all of it Russian, brought in to be refined and then shipped out again as Georgian-made fuel.

Production of kerosene, gas oil and fuel oil has jumped sharply, and exports of these products in July were around 25 times higher than the same month last year - mostly heading to Singapore and a handful of African countries, alongside China and Turkey. Total oil exports for the first seven months came to just over $543 million, up roughly 4,000 per cent on the year before.

Togo: an unlikely trade partner

That's where Togo comes in. From January to July, Georgia sent oil worth $137 million to Togo - a country it had, as far as anyone can tell, never exported anything to before. That single trade line now makes up around five per cent of all of Georgia's exports of locally produced goods, more than the country sends to Armenia, a long-standing regional trading partner.

It's such a new relationship that the statistics office has no historical data to compare it against; last year's figures, and the growth rate alongside them, simply show up blank. A country with no prior trade history suddenly becoming a top export destination is unusual enough to raise questions, and the likeliest explanation lies in how the oil trade actually works.

Togo is home to Lomé, a major West African transshipment hub, and cargoes are often booked to a destination port for logistical or documentation reasons rather than because the oil is genuinely consumed there.

In other words, Togo may be less an end customer and more a convenient staging post - a place for Russian-origin fuel, freshly rebranded as Georgian, to change hands again before reaching wherever it's actually going. That would also explain why a market with no track record of buying Georgian goods suddenly looks like one of its biggest customers.

None of this is happening in a vacuum

Georgia's government has faced growing criticism from Brussels and Western partners over its ties to Moscow since the start of the war in Ukraine, and the Kulevi story fits neatly into that wider argument: that Georgian territory is being used, wittingly or not, to help Russian oil find its way to international markets despite sanctions designed to cut off exactly that.

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Tbilisi has pushed back firmly, insisting there are no legal grounds for singling out the refinery and that it's cooperating fully with EU institutions. But for a country trying to keep its EU accession hopes alive, having its flagship refinery named in a sanctions package - and its export statistics quietly filled with Russian crude wearing a Georgian label - is an awkward look, whatever the technical justifications.

The refinery's next steps are a story in themselves, and one worth following separately. For now, the refining boom remains the single biggest force behind Georgia's growth figures — and Togo, an accidental bit-part player in someone else's oil trade, is unlikely to stay on the books once the crude finally stops coming from Russia.

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Georgia Economy Russia