After striking out in the Utica shale in Ohio last year, EQT Corp. says it found success with an expensive but high-flowing gas well in the deep rock below Greene County.

Initial production levels that top any others reported in the Utica provided bright news Thursday in a quarterly earnings call dominated by talk of low natural gas prices that aren't expected to improve for several years. Whether the Downtown-based well and pipeline operator will put more emphasis on the rock layer below the Marcellus will depend on more testing.

“While this is clearly a phenomenal well, we need to get up the learning curve and get our cost down and get some decline history of this well, so we truly understand what the economics are,” Steven Schlotterbeck, executive vice president for exploration and production, told analysts while discussing financial results from the second quarter.

“I would say the initial data far exceeds our expectation. So I think that's a very positive sign for the economics of the Utica, but we're going to need to drill a few more wells ... before we make any major shifts to our development plan,” he said.

For now, EQT's plan is to watch for chances to buy Marcellus acreage, improve on its 16 percent cut in drilling costs this year and seek projects like a new pipeline for fellow operator Range Resources Corp. while it deals with low prices.

“You kind of have to wait out this downturn,” said Stewart Glickman, an energy analyst in New York with S&P Capital IQ who lowered EQT's price outlook from $95 to $81 because of “the market environment for natural gas.”

Net income at EQT fell by 95 percent to $5.5 million, or 4 cents per share, during the quarter that ended June 30, compared to $110.9 million, or 73 cents per share last year. A 40-percent drop in prices was to blame.

Investors reacted positively. Its stock closed up 5.4 percent to $76.27.

EQT, Pennsylvania's fifth-largest shale gas producer by volume, boosted production by a third over the same period last year while drilling 48 Marcellus and Upper Devonian wells during the quarter. Yet operating revenue slid by more than 17 percent to $433.2 million. An increase in revenue in its midstream pipeline business kept it from dropping further.

“The midstream was really the only reason they generated any (earnings per share),” Glickman said.

Its spinoff company EQT Midstream Partners said it plans to build a $250 million, 32-mile “header” system for Range Resources to connect wells in southwestern Pennsylvania to pipeline hubs. It will be complete in two phases starting in the fall of 2016.

Further success in the Utica — where several companies are exploring a formation that a recent study said holds as much gas as the Marcellus — could provide more pipeline business.

“The Utica is not exactly a positive for longer term natural gas prices, but it is very much a positive for those of us with core Utica positions and those of us with midstream assets in this region,” said CEO David Porges.

The well that EQT drilled from an existing Marcellus pad costs more than $30 million, partly because of problems workers encountered with high pressure 13,000 feet below ground. Schlotterbeck said the company hopes to get the average Utica well price down to $12.5 million as it drills another well in Wetzel County, W.Va.

At an initial rate of nearly 73 million cubic feet per day it topped the 59 million cubic feet that a Range well in Washington County produced this year.

“If we keep getting these kinds of results and our peers keep getting these kinds of results, then I do think we have to assume that's going to shift the supply-demand balance again, which will mean that some places probably don't make sense to develop,” Porges said.