Fortescue Metal’s chairman Andrew Forrest and two Japanese utilities plan to build an LNG import terminal in New South Wales by 2020 to help alleviate an energy crunch in Australia’s most populous state. Bloomberg reports that the terminal will have an annual capacity of 2 million tons of LNG. The project will include offshore gas production facilities as well. The energy supply crunch has come amid soaring gas exports that, as has happened with other major exporters, have shrunk local supplies, causing price spikes. In Australia last year, things got so bad that gas on the domestic market was much costlier than exports to Japan. Forrest will take part in the project via his private company Squadron Energy, in partnership with Japanese Marubeni Corp. and Jera, which is a joint venture between Japanese utilities Tepco and Chubu Electric Power Co. Australia is currently the world’s second-largest LNG exporter after […]