Chevron Sees 'Tremendous Opportunity' In Mexico Oil Reforms

MEXICO CITY, May 12 (Reuters) - Mexico's energy reform provides a range of attractive investment possibilities for international oil companies in Latin America's second-biggest economy, a senior Chevron Corp executive said on Monday.

"There's tremendous opportunity here," Ali Moshiri, Chevron's Houston-based head of exploration and production for Latin America and Africa, said at an event in Mexico City.

The constitutional energy reform passed late last year ends state oil company Pemex's 75-year-old monopoly and could pave the way for billions of dollars in new investments aimed at reversing a nearly decade-long slide in crude production.

So-called secondary legislation that will set out fiscal and regulatory details of the reform was presented a couple weeks ago, and is expected to be taken up by Mexico's Congress in a special session in June.

"As soon as the secondary laws pass ... then we can basically take that information and then look for the opportunity that meets our economic requirements," said Moshiri.

He did not specify which areas in Mexico, the world's No. 10 producer of crude, are most attractive to the San Ramon, California-based oil major.

Chevron, the third-largest deep water crude producer in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, currently has a technology collaboration agreement with Pemex but no other commercial tie-ups with the Mexican state oil giant.

"Whether or not it's unconventional or conventional (projects in Mexico), or deep water, it really doesn't matter, because we have technology for all of it, and we are in business in all of it," he added.

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)