Vice President of the policy think tank IMANI Africa, Bright Simons, has questioned Ghana’s long-term energy strategy following the commissioning of the LPG carrier MT Asharami Ghana by John Dramani Mahama in South Korea.

The vessel, a 40,000-cubic-metre liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carrier, was constructed by HD Hyundai Heavy Industries and is owned by Sahara Group. It was officially unveiled in Ulsan as part of initiatives aimed at improving Ghana’s LPG supply chain and advancing the country’s clean cooking agenda.

Despite the significance of the commissioning, Simons believes the development highlights deeper structural problems within Ghana’s gas policy framework rather than resolving them.

In a detailed assessment of Ghana’s LNG and LPG sectors, Simons suggested that the country’s energy planning has long been influenced by what he describes as “katanomics” — a system in which political commitments frequently outpace the institutional capacity required to implement them.

He explained that Ghana’s experience with liquefied natural gas projects demonstrates this mismatch between policy ambition and execution.

According to him, the Tema LNG Terminal, although physically completed for several years, has still not received a commercial cargo despite multiple commissioning announcements dating back to 2016.

Simons further pointed out that Ghana has already incurred significant financial costs from unsuccessful energy agreements, noting that arbitration awards have run into hundreds of millions of dollars for projects that ultimately failed to supply gas or generate electricity.

While acknowledging that the Asharami Ghana vessel could enhance LPG imports and improve supply reliability, Simons cautioned that it should not be viewed as a definitive solution to the country’s broader energy security concerns.

“The real issue is whether the policy environment can sustain long-term energy infrastructure without collapsing under political and regulatory contradictions,” he argued.