Tesoro is evaluating Mexican energy reforms that open up midstream and retail businesses to foreign, private competition, chief executive Greg Goff said.
Goff did not offer any specifics, only confirming that Tesoro was considering Mexico as it would any opportunity. But Tesoro's west coast business strategy offers a somewhat unique opportunity compared with mostly US Gulf coast interest in the market.
"It is encouraging there is that kind of possibility," Goff said on the sidelines of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturing (AFPM) conference in San Francisco, California.
The company prefers to act as a downstream integrated firm, using either offtake contracts or its own retail system to ensure placement of refined products across its refining system, which is mostly positioned along the west coast.
Fuel marketing in Baja, just south of California on Mexico's western coast, already depends on products trucked from the US. It could prove a natural expansion for a refiner operating California's largest crude throughput capacity.
But Tesoro's interest would depend on the reforms and rules that take shape, he said.
"We have to look at all the different possibilities," Goff said. "To have the connection between Canada, the US and Mexico, it makes a lot of sense."
