Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
And welcome to the 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of EQT Corporation. Please note today's meeting is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to Lydia Vibi, Independent Chair of the Board of Directors of EQT Corporation. Ms. Beebe, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is my pleasure to welcome all of you to the 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of EQT Corporation, which is being held in this virtual format in keeping with EQT's commitment to the health and safety of our employees, our shareholders and all of our stakeholders. Before I turn the meeting over to our CEO, I want to offer a few introductory remarks on behalf of the Board of Directors. As directors, we do service representatives of EQT's shareholders with a primary focus on policy, oversight and the company's strategic direction.
We believe that strong corporate governance practices are the foundation for successful companies. This includes concentrated attention by both the Board and management on critical environmental, social and governance issues. These issues present challenges and opportunities for EQT and we are focused on ensuring that EQT is best positioned to meet them for the benefit of all our stakeholders. Over the past 2 years, I have been privileged to work with the highly qualified and dedicated directors listed in your proxy statement, all of whom have extensive experience in business and the industry and contribute greatly to the Board and committee deliberations. It is my sad duty today to acknowledge the unexpected death of Director Steve Thorrington on Saturday.
In the time we served together on this Board, speaking for myself and I know my colleagues, Steve earned our respect, admiration and appreciation for his dedication, expertise and his skillful leadership of our audit committee, always bringing a calm wisdom and steadfast collegiality to our Board. We will all miss him and we express our deepest sympathy to his family and friends. The Board has not designated the substitute nominee for Mr. Thornton and has instead reduced the size of the Board to 11 directors. The other director nominees named in the company's proxy statement will continue to stand for election at this annual meeting.
For the past year, it has been my honor to serve as Chair of this Board, and I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank each of you, my fellow directors, for your commitment to the company and your hard work. Together, we have overseen the management team's diligence, determination and perseverance successfully reshaping the trajectory of EQT's business, and we are proud of the positive direction in which our company is heading. On behalf of the entire Board, I want to thank our excellent management team and all of our employees for their dedication, resourcefulness and commitment to adding value for our stockholders and creating a vision for an exciting future. It is now truly my great pleasure to introduce our fantastic President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Toby Reif, who will share the remainder of this meeting.
Thank you.
Thank you, Lydia, and good morning. I would like to also welcome everyone to our 2021 Annual Meeting. After the business portion of today's meeting, I will offer some brief remarks about our company, followed by the opportunity for a question and answer session. I now call this meeting to order. Our 2021 annual meeting is being streamed at a live audio web cast to afford all of our shareholders as well as other interested stakeholders an opportunity to participate while protecting the health and safety of our employees, shareholders and other participants.
A list of rules governing today's meeting is available on the meeting portal. The business of the meeting will be taken up in the order outlined in the agenda. I would now like to introduce the members of our Board of Directors who are present at today's meeting. Our Independent Board Chair, Lydia Beebe Doctor. Philip Berman Lee Canan Janet Karen Doctor.
Katherine Jackson John McCartney James McManus II Anita Powers Daniel Joseph Rice IV and Hallie van der Heider. I would also like to introduce our executive officers: Dave Conte, Chief Financial Officer Will Jordan, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary Leslie Avanco, Chief Human Resources Officer Tony Duran, Chief Information Officer and Todd James, Chief Accounting Officer. Finally, Von Koch, a partner at Ernst and Young, is also present at today's meeting as a representative of our independent registered public accounting firm, Ernst and Young. The Corporate Secretary, Will Jordan, has presented a copy of the notice of meeting and the affidavit showing that each shareholder of record of this company received by mail either the notice of meeting, the proxy statement and a proxy card or a notice of Internet availability of proxy materials as required by law. Based on proxies on file, shareholders present by proxy represent at least 237,000,000 shares or approximately 85% of all shares entitled to be voting to be voted at the meeting, and this constitutes a quorum for purposes of this meeting.
The Board of Directors has appointed Alison Graham, Daniel Sadowski and Monique Hughes as judges of election. Each is in attendance at the meeting today. The judges of election have executed an affidavit under oath with respect to their duties, and the affidavit has been filed with the record of this meeting. The minutes of the last annual meeting of the shareholders held on May 1, 2020, are available for shareholders to view via the link on the meeting portal. Let's now proceed to the matters to be voted on today.
Three matters were presented in the proxy statement for shareholder consideration, all three of which were proposed by the Board of Directors. The first agenda item, item 1, is the election of 11 directors nominated by the Board. Each director elected at this meeting will serve a 1 year term expiring at the Annual Shareholders Meeting in 2022. The Board recommends a vote for the election of all nominees. The second agenda item, item 2, is approval of a non binding resolution regarding the compensation of the company's named executive officers for 2020.
The Board recommends a vote for this proposal. The 3rd item on the agenda, item 3, is ratification of the appointment of Ernst and Young LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for 2021. The Board recommends a vote for this proposal. We will now proceed with the voting. It is 8:0:7 a.
M. The polls are now open. I now call for a vote on the nominations and proposals. If there are any shareholders present who have not submitted their proxies and wish to vote at this time, please do so by clicking the link provided in the online meeting portal. If you voted before today's meeting via phone, Internet or mail, there is no need to cast your vote again.
We will now pause for a brief moment to allow shareholders to desire to submit their votes now to do so. It is now 8:0:9 a. M, and I declare the polls to be closed. I now would like to receive the preliminary report of the judges of election who have submitted their report to the corporate secretary.
Each of the elected persons nominated for election as Director has received the majority of those cast. Item 2, approval of a non binding resolution regarding compensation of the company's main executive officers for 2020 received the majority of those casts. Item 3, ratification of the appointment of RC Young for 2021 received majority of those casts. The official vote count will be reported by the company on Form 8 ks to be filed with the SEC.
Thank you. I hereby declare that the 11 nominees listed in the proxy statement have been elected directors of the company, and proposal items 23 have been approved by the shareholders. With the business portion of the meeting now complete, as Chair of the meeting, I declare the annual meeting to be officially concluded. I would now like to share a few thoughts regarding the successes realized in 2020 and the opportunities ahead. 2020 was a year in which we turned our vision for EQT into action, taking critical steps in our mission to realize the full potential of EQT's premier assets.
First, we evolved into a modern, digitally enabled natural gas company. Our digital work environment now facilitates better planning, increased transparency and governance, leading to more consistent execution in the field. It also serves to digitally connect and empower all of our employees. As we transitioned into a remote working environment in response to the COVID-nineteen pandemic early in 2020, this technology, which we had already begun leveraging in 2019, enables a seamless transition of our workforce. Even more importantly, our digital work environment allowed us to continue to build and enhance our culture with our employees remaining connected, productive and engaged.
In fact, in early 2021, EQT was named a National Top Workplace based on our high level of employee engagement. These benefits translated to operational and financial success. In 2020, we delivered a consistent level of production volumes, while at the same time reducing capital spent by $694,000,000 We also significantly reduced our well costs, reducing legacy development costs by approximately 30%. 2nd, we strengthened our balance sheet. In 2020, our team opportunistically access the capital markets and utilize free cash flow to address our near term debt maturities and reduce our total debt by $368,000,000 In 2021, we plan to continue to advance toward our objective of an investment grade credit rating.
3rd, we capitalized on several key strategic initiatives, including renegotiating our gas gathering contracts with Equitrans Midstream Corporation and executing our financially accretive acquisition of Chevron's Appalachian Basin assets. Finally, as Lydia mentioned at the outset, we continue to focus on developing and executing our ESG strategy, which is a priority for both the Board and our management team. We believe natural gas is critical to accelerating a sustainable pathway to a lower carbon future. We will be releasing our 2020 ESG report this summer, which will lay out in detail both where we are and more importantly, where we are headed as a company on important ESG issues like climate and the critical role Appalachian Natural Gas has to play in reaching a lower carbon future. In concluding, I would like to thank all of our shareholders for their support and loyalty to EQT.
We have high ambition to build upon the successes we achieved in 2020. With that, let's move to the question and answer session. I'd like to remind everyone that questions must address
the business operations of the company and that individual matters of personal grievances not of concern to all shareholders generally will not be answered in this form. If your question relates to the subject matter covered by more than one submitted question, we will attempt to address the subject matter in a consolidated response to avoid avoidant questions. With that, we'll open the floor to questions. Seeing no questions, we can conclude the question and answer session. This is
Toby Wright again. In closing, I'd just like to thank everyone for attending and participating in today's meeting. This management team, this employee base, this Board of Directors looks forward to creating more value for our shareholders in the future. Thank you and have a good day.