MOSCOW (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin and his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, on Tuesday discussed Russia's plans to supply Mexico with liquefied natural gas, part of a push to step up energy cooperation between two major oil producers.

Fox said his visit, the first visit by a Mexican president since the 1991 Soviet collapse "will no doubt produce positive results and give a new dynamism to our relations."

"Our ties and the intensity of our cooperation are growing along with our economies," Fox said. The two leaders met last year in Mexico.

Putin and Fox oversaw the signing of four bilateral agreements by top officials, including one aimed at stepping up energy cooperation.

"We are working on a series of serious projects in the economic sphere, including in energy," Putin said at the start of their meeting. "I am pleased to note that liquefied gas will be delivered to the Mexican coast from Sakhalin," an island off Russia's Pacific coast.

In October, Sakhalin Energy announced a deal to ship 37 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to a terminal in Mexico over 20 years, beginning in 2008. That arrangement was the first aimed at channeling Russian LNG to the United States, where demand for natural gas is surging.

The Sakhalin-2 project, whose partners include Mitsui & Co. Ltd., Mitsubishi Corp. and Royal Dutch/Shell, has reserves of some 150 million tons of oil and 500 billion cubic meters of gas.

Fox said he and Putin also discussed other prospects for energy cooperation, and that Russia had expressed interest in deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico does not have the required equipment, "so we are very interested in Russian participation in this process," Fox said.

Putin said that Russia had other plans for cooperation with Mexico, including in hydroelectric and nuclear power and machine- building.

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