Summit Natural Gas of Maine is scaling back plans to add service in Kennebec and Cumberland counties, citing a lack of demand because of a drop in heating oil prices .

“The level of interest for new conversions isn’t as high as we thought or hoped it would be,” said Mike Duguay, Summit’s director of business development.

The company has been expanding its network of natural gas pipelines into areas of Augusta, Waterville, Fairfield, Cumberland, Falmouth and Yarmouth.

But in the past year, the price of oil has plummeted.

Crude oil prices have tumbled from around $62 per barrel in mid-June to $41.71 per barrel on Thursday. As oil prices dropped, so did the price of heating oil, a common form of fuel in Maine households. According to the Governor’s Energy Office, the price of No. 2 heating oil last week was $2.17 per gallon, the lowest it has been since fall 2009 and down from a high of almost $4 a gallon in the winter of 2013-14. Prices have dropped to under $2 a gallon in southern Maine.

Low oil prices mean potential customers aren’t interested in spending up to $12,000 to convert oil boilers to natural gas, Duguay said.

While Summit is scaling back its expansion, its main competitor in Augusta, Maine Natural Gas, is moving ahead with its expansion this year, despite low oil prices.

“We made plans for 2015 and we’re sticking to everything we’re going to build,” said Pete Bottomley, manager of sales and marketing.

Maine Natural Gas is a subsidiary of Iberdrola, a Spanish energy company that also owns Central Maine Power Co. The company has been doing business in the state for 15 years and has seen price fluctuations before, Bottomley said. Even in times when natural gas is more expensive than oil, the company has grown its pipeline network, he said. The company plans to be prepared for when demand grows.

“Sometimes gas is higher than oil. Sometimes it’s a bargain,” Bottomley said. “When natural gas is much cheaper than oil, the phones won’t stop ringing.”

As the company sought new customers earlier this year, it didn’t see the interest needed to make the investment worthwhile.

“Just right now, the numbers weren’t what we were hoping for. They just weren’t able to express a commitment to convert this year,” Duguay said. Duguay didn’t go into detail about precisely where Summit was postponing the build out or how much footage it was reducing from its plan.

In an emailed statement Thursday, company spokeswoman Tammy Poissonnier said the company will construct about 85 percent of its planned build-out.

The company believes the price of oil will increase again, and it is still planning to complete construction on the network at some point.

The high upfront cost of converting from heating oil to natural gas or other more efficient systems has been a challenge in Maine, particularly in some of the low-income parts of the state, such as the Kennebec valley, said Patrick Woodcock, the director of the governor’s energy office. The cost of converting to natural gas or another fuel runs anywhere from $3,000 to install a burner conversion on a modern system to $12,000 for a new system, Woodcock said.

While the dramatic drop in the price of oil means people might put off converting, they could use money they save on heating this year to invest in more efficient systems and become less dependent on heating oil.

“Lower oil prices are unequivocally a good thing, but we have to take advantage of that possibility to reduce our energy consumption and move forward with modern heat,” Woodcock said.

“The bottom line is we need to become less exposed to oil, and that means becoming more efficient,” he added. “I think Mainers are savvy. I think they understand that markets can change dramatically.”

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