Non-Receiving of Bids for Shipment of Natural Gas from us by Gail The Minister of State (I/C) for Petroleum & Natural Gas Shri Dharmendra Pradhan informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply today that the tender floated by GAIL provided for charter hiring of 9 ships quoted in 3 lots of 3 ships each and 1 ship in each lot was to be built in an Indian Shipyard. GAIL's tender specified that Indian shipyards would require to forge a binding technical collaboration with foreign shipyard who would transfer LNG shipbuilding technology. However, no qualified foreign shipyard signed a binding collaboration with an Indian shipyard till the due date for bid submission. After consistent efforts of the Indian Government with the Korean Government for persuading the Korean shipyards to collaborate with Indian shipyards, recently, Samsung shipyard has signed a collaboration agreement with Cochin shipyard. MJPS/Rk
