Nov 2, 2019 2 min read

Eight days after its top executive spoke optimistically about EQT Corp., the Pittsburgh-based oil and gas driller announced budget cuts Thursday morning.

The company issued its third-quarter financial report, which said EQT reduced its capital budget by $115 million this year and intends to cut capital expenditures by $525 million in its plan for 2020.

EQT, the largest independent natural gas producer in the United States, also said in the report that it is “committed to reducing debt by at least $1.5 billion by midyear (2020).”

The natural gas market has been suppressed for about three years, resulting in continued low gas prices.

These reductions and planned reductions were reported about two months after EQT cut its workforce by nearly one-fourth, furloughing 196 of 800 employees. EQT, at the time, attributed reductions to “streamlining.”

Toby Rice, president and chief executive officer, spoke Oct. 23 at the Shale Insight conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in downtown Pittsburgh, hours before President Donald Trump gave the keynote speech. Rice, who led a new management team takeover of the firm in July, was upbeat about EQT’s prospects.

Rice and two brothers, Dan and Derek, launched Rice Energy in 2008 and located it in Southpointe. EQT bought Rice Energy for $6.7 billion in November 2017.

Toby Rice said in the EQT report: “We are on track to transform EQT into a modern, digitally enabled, efficient and values-driven natural gas producer. Over the past 100 days, our actions have been focused on delivering the foundational elements necessary for EQT’s transition toward efficiently executing large-scale development projects across our sizable undeveloped core inventory. The team has made significant progress . . .”