Billionaire miner Andrew Forrest and two of Japan's biggest power utilities plan to build a liquefied natural gas import terminal in Australia by 2020.

The terminal could process as many as 2 million tons of LNG a year in New South Wales, the country's most populous state, to help ease an energy crisis that's crimped supplies for industrial users, the Australian Industrial Energy consortium said Monday in a statement.

Forrest, the chairman of the world's No. 4 iron ore exporter Fortescue Metals Group Ltd., is backing the initiative through his Squadron Energy unit along with Marubeni Corp. and Jera Co., a venture between Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. and Chubu Electric Power Co. The plan follows a proposal by AGL Energy Ltd. to build an import terminal in Victoria.