Australia’s refining capacity is set to decline by at least a quarter from current levels by 2015 as refiners there grapple with ageing equipment, cheaper imports and high costs, leading to closures, and restructurings.

“We have in fact had an approach in the last two or three weeks from a major corporation I can’t name to set up a terminal in Brisbane,” said Mark McArdle, energy minister of Queensland state of which Brisbane is the capital.

McArdle was responding to questions from Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore on how Australia was coping with its heavier reliance on oil product imports. He declined to provide details.

One refinery in Australia has shut, while another will be closed in 2014.

Caltex Australia announced in 2012 that it will shut its loss-making 124,500 barrel-per-day (bpd) Kurnell oil refinery in Sydney in the second half of 2014. The facility will be converted into an import terminal.

Royal Dutch Shell has already closed its 79,000 bpd Clyde refinery near Sydney and has turned it into a fuel terminal.

Shell has also put its Geelong refinery in Victoria state for sale.

It was more cost-effective for Australia to turn to oil products imports given the economies of scales the Asian refineries have, McArdle said.

The idea of building a terminal in Brisbane is still in the early stages but both parties are showing keen interest in it, he added.

For Brisbane, the terminal won’t be only about boosting employment, the minister said. “It also diversifies the economy and perhaps potentially fills a gap in the market cycle.”

Australia’s total refining capacity will fall by 25.5 percent to 593,000 bpd by 2015 after the closures of Clyde and Kurnell.

Besides Caltex’s Lytton refinery, Queensland has a second one, operated by BP Plc in Bulwer.

“We have no indications at all that they are going to shut down,” said McArdle of the two Queensland refineries.

“We don’t believe that they will, but again it depends upon how the super corporations go in the Asian sector.”