India's crude and gas imports are worth more than $150 billion a year, entirely seaborne, and make up nearly 28 per cent of the country's total trade by volume — yet only around a fifth of that cargo travels on a ship India actually flags or owns. The Petroleum Minister went to Korea in November 2025 to do something about it, and the numbers he cited while he was there are the clearest official statement yet of what that gap costs and what closing it would require.
India Pays $5-8 Billion a Year to Ship Its Own Oil. Only 20% of That Cargo Travels on an Indian Vessel.
What actually happened, and where
On 13-14 November 2025, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri held a run of meetings in South Korea aimed squarely at India's shipbuilding gap: HD Hyundai's chairman at the company's Global R&D Centre in Seongnam, the CEOs of four major Korean shipping companies (Korea Ocean Business Corporation, SK Shipping, H-Line Shipping and Pan Ocean), Hanwha Ocean's president and CEO in Seoul, and a visit to HD Hyundai Heavy Industries' shipyard in Ulsan — at 1,680 acres, the world's largest. Per the Ministry's own press release, the trip sits under India's Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047, the government's long-horizon plan to expand India's commercial fleet, build up domestic shipbuilding capacity, and improve competitiveness across ship operations, shipyards and maritime-plant manufacturing.
The numbers the Minister cited at these meetings are the actual substance of this piece, and they are stated plainly in the government's own release rather than reconstructed from elsewhere: India's crude and gas imports are worth over $150 billion a year, entirely seaborne, and the oil and gas sector accounts for nearly 28 per cent of India's total trade by volume — making it the single largest commodity group moving through Indian ports. Of that cargo, only around 20 per cent travels on a vessel India flags or owns; the rest is carried on foreign tonnage. India's own freight bill for that exposure runs to $5 billion to $8 billion a year, per the Minister's own figure at the Ulsan meeting.
What India says it needs to close the gap
HD Hyundai's own account of the meeting, relayed in the same press release, puts a number on the ambition: India plans to grow its commercial fleet from 1,500 to 2,500 vessels and invest $24 billion under the Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision, including a separately announced $8 billion specifically earmarked for fleet expansion. On the demand side, the Minister stated that Indian public-sector undertakings alone could procure as many as 59 crude, LNG and ethane vessels, and separately cited ONGC's own projected need for close to 100 offshore service and platform-supply vessels by 2034 — a distinct, upstream-operations demand line from the crude/LNG/ethane carrier count. The Minister also noted continuing progress on an existing MoU with Cochin Shipyard, with plans for a block-fabrication facility to be finalised, and framed the pitch to Korean shipbuilders directly: with "nearly 20% of global vessels expected to either come to or go from India in the next 15 years," he described the opportunity as one for Korean yards to "Make in India for the World."
The one-line version. India imports the large majority of its energy by sea, pays foreign shipowners $5-8 billion a year to carry most of it, and is now explicitly courting Korean shipbuilding capacity — rather than only domestic capacity — to help close that gap, alongside its own yards like Cochin Shipyard.
What this piece cannot yet tell you
This piece is built on a single government press release describing a set of high-level meetings, not on signed contracts. As of this writing, no binding order, joint venture, or investment agreement between an Indian entity and HD Hyundai, Hanwha Ocean, or any of the Korean shipping companies named in the release had been separately confirmed by this piece's research. The $24 billion Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision investment figure, and the 1,500-to-2,500 fleet target, are attributed in the source document to HD Hyundai's own account of what it understood India's plans to be, not independently sourced to a separate Indian government budget document in this piece. Readers should treat this piece as a record of what was said and by whom at a specific diplomatic meeting — genuinely informative about India's stated ambition and the scale of the freight-cost problem, but not yet evidence that shipbuilding capacity has actually been contracted.
What would fix this
- MoPNG and the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways should publish a joint, itemised account of what has actually been contracted from this Korea trip — and from the broader Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision pipeline — distinct from meeting readouts, so the 59-vessel PSU procurement figure and the $24 billion investment figure can be tracked against actual signed orders over time.
- The Cochin Shipyard block-fabrication facility MoU should get a public timeline, given the Minister's own language ("will be finalised soon") leaves no date this piece could hold the government to.
- A public, updated figure for India's actual Indian-flagged share of oil-and-gas cargo specifically (distinct from the all-trade figure this blog has separately tracked) would let this $5-8 billion annual freight-cost figure be checked year over year, rather than resting on one Minister's remarks at one meeting.
These are proposals from this blog, not recommendations any agency has adopted.
Sources and caveats
All figures and quotations in this piece are drawn directly from the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas's own Press Information Bureau release, "Shri Hardeep Singh Puri Holds Key Shipbuilding Meetings to Boost India's Maritime Vision," dated 14 November 2025, describing meetings held in South Korea on 13-14 November 2025. This includes: the $150 billion-plus seaborne crude/gas import figure and the 28% trade-by-volume share; the ~20% Indian-flagged/Indian-owned carriage share for that cargo; the $5-8 billion annual freight-spend figure, attributed to the Minister at the HD Hyundai Ulsan shipyard visit; the 59-vessel PSU procurement figure; ONGC's ~100-vessel-by-2034 offshore service and platform-supply requirement; the Cochin Shipyard MoU and block-fabrication-facility status; and the meeting participants and venues named throughout. The 1,500-to-2,500 fleet target and the $24 billion Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision investment figure (including an $8 billion fleet-expansion allocation) are attributed in the source release specifically to HD Hyundai's own account of what it understood from the discussions, not independently confirmed against a separate Indian government budget or policy document by this piece. The comparison figure for India's all-trade Indian-flagged carriage share (4-5%) is from this blog's own earlier, separately sourced piece on India's maritime legal reforms. This piece did not find independent confirmation, beyond the PIB release itself, of any signed contract or binding investment agreement resulting from this specific round of meetings. Nothing in this piece is investment or shipping-industry advice. Compiled via document research on 28 September 2026.
About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.
