Peter C. Nelson was named president and CEO of California Water Service Co. Nelson also will be a director. He comes from Pacific Gas & Electric Co., where he was v.p.-division operations. He replaces the retiring Donald L. Houck.

Jack Lucido of ANR Pipeline Co. was elected to the American Gas Association's pipeline research committee, succeeding Gary Walker of Pacific Transmission Co.

The Electric Power Research Institute hired Karl G. Van Orsdol as senior manager, international relations.

Cutting employees

may be less than healthy, unless you're ready to replace them with technology.

As competition intensifies, increasing numbers of executives are realizing that customer service may have a more important role now than just placating regulators. After all, the broad spectrum of customer service is the principal way (em other than rates (em to differentiate a utility product and the utility itself.

To listen to some, EDI stands for "Everybody's Doing It." But there's more to it than that. The natural gas market is not simply about electronic bulletin boards (EBBs) or electronic data interchange (EDI), which reconciles potentially inconsistent data, protocols, and trading customs among pipelines, shippers, distributors, and end users. Instead, it should be about solutions (em solutions that work across regions, across enterprises.

EDI is tough.

Management expert Peter F. Drucker has observed that our society has entered a "post-capitalist" stage in which economic activity is organized around information: "The basic economic resource ... is no longer 'capital' nor 'natural resources'...

At its first-ever annual meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, GISB also was gently chided and commended by James J. Hoecker of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC): "I submit to you that GISB must not, in an attempt to please everyone, set standards at the lowest common denominator.

The restructuring of electric utilities is fundamentally a matter of national policy (em not a regulatory issue. Regulators are ill-suited to make national policy because they are conditioned to act within the limits of authority specifically granted by legislation, rather than to seek a fresh statutory mandate in response to changed conditions. Policymakers must assess political, social, economic, technological, regional, and national factors to measure the need for reform.

Stephen P. Reynolds

President & CEO

Pacific Gas Transmission Co.

Standardization has been an issue in every industry since the beginning of the Machine Age. As products continue to evolve, we need something like GISB to help find a prudent and appropriate level of standardization.

With this issue I've finished up my first 12 months as full-time editor of PUBLIC UTILITIES FORTNIGHTLY. During that time, I've tried to adhere to few simple rules. If I'm lucky, I'm batting four out of five:

s Trust ideas, not facts

s Welcome different views

s Don't shy from difficult subjects

s Make it easy to read

s Take a day off now and then.

Someone once said that an editor's job is twofold: "Simplify and exaggerate." That advice may sound peculiar, but one could do worse.

On May 31, the Gas Industry Standards Board (GISB) circulated for industry review and comment proposed electronic standards for capacity release. The proposed standards are based on the work of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) electronic bulletin board (EBB) working group, and include those formally adopted by the FERC in Order 563. GISB added easy implementation methods and expanded the definitions of the information requirements. It also included enhancements that the FERC EBB working group plans to file for FERC review in the near future.