Mar 13, 2015 2 min read

Consol Energy Inc. announced Friday a revised 2015 exploration and production capital expenditure forecast of $920 million for its natural gas business.

The company said in a news release the new spending plan, which is $80 million lower than the $1 billion capital expenditure plan originally announced Jan. 30 is a result of lower prices for natural gas products.

The company said the revised budget reflects a continued focus to high-grade the development plan to further reduce capital in a lower commodity price environment, while maintaining the E&P production growth target of 30 percent in 2015.

In addition to reducing capital, Consol said it also continues to make progress on driving operating costs lower through cutting costs and implementing efficiency improvements with the goal of keeping its year-end 2015 leverage ratio flat, when compared to 2014.

Excluding Marcellus gathering capital of aprroximately $100 million, Consol said it expects to allocate about 52 percent of the remaining E&P capital budeget toward dry-gas development. It said it is retaining the flexibility to increase activity levels in the second half of 2015 will largely determine the production growth in 2016, which it said it expects to exceed 20 percent over this year’s production levels.

Other natural gas E&P companies, including Range Resources, Chevron and EQT announced reduced spending plans for 2015 as a result of a natural gas production glut that caused lower commodity prices.