Natural gas could help determine whether Mexico can shrink the economic gap between its industrialized north and developing south, according to a new report published by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

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Through his Program for the Development of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (PDIT), President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is aiming to succeed where his predecessors failed, stimulating industrial development in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz.

“This program aims to expand the region’s economy on the back of a logistical platform known as Interoceanic Corridor (IC),” said the report authored by Adrian Duhalt, a postdoctoral fellow in Mexico energy studies at the Houston think tank.

The corridor project is meant to strengthen ties between the deepwater...