While AGL Resources says it’s naming its new marketing affiliateAtlanta Gas Light Services to spare customers confusion, regulatorsand at least one competing marketer claim the move capitalizesunfairly on name recognition built by utility Atlanta Gas Light.

“Atlanta Gas Light Services is a new, entrepreneurial, marketcompetitive company that shares its heritage with a family ofcompanies that Georgians have known and trusted for reliable gasservice for many years,” said Walter M. Higgins, CEO of AGLResources. Operations of AGL commercial and industrial marketingaffiliate The Energy Spring will be brought under Atlanta Gas LightServices, and the Energy Spring name will be replaced by AtlantaGas Light Services. “When you’re involved with trying to get amillion customers to do the work to sign up with you as a serviceprovider, you’ve got to have a name that will reflect a little bitmore about the company,” AGL spokesman Ross Willis said in defenseof the marketing arm’s name.

At least part of the immediate name recognition Atlanta GasLight Services will enjoy was paid for by ratepayers, said KathleenMagruder, vice president of rates and tariffs for Enron EnergyServices, which plans to compete against Atlanta Gas Light Servicesand others in the Georgia market. “I would assume that the reasonAGL has decided to take this tack is that they know there is amarket power advantage to using this name,” Magruder said. Shenoted AGL already had established The Energy Spring in thecommercial and industrial market.

Georgia Public Service Commission spokesman Shawn Davis said thePSC was only given one day’s notice of AGL’s intent to changeEnergy Spring to AGL Services. “The announcement was unexpected tosay the least.” Davis said during three years of negotiationsleading up to Georgia deregulation, AGL said Energy Spring would beits marketer for small commercial and residential customers.

Willis said this was not so; the company did not commit to usingEnergy Spring in the residential, small commercial market. “I’vebeen talking to people for months telling them that The EnergySpring was a marketer focused on large commercial and industrialcustomers and that they were doing a good job but thatthat namewould probably not be used. for residential and small businesscustomers,” Willis said.

Enron enjoys “huge name recognition. I think their name willserve them very well. We wonder if they won’t have a namerecognition advantage,” Willis said. “I don’t see how you can havean unfair competitive advantage when you’re doing something that’snever been done, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.” UnlikeAtlanta Gas Light, Enron is not a utility with captive ratepayerswho have helped pay for the advertising of its name, Georgia PSCCommissioner Stan Wise pointed out.

“I will say that I am concerned and we will have to review theissues of the name and the relationship between the name and marketpower in a new competitive marketplace,” Wise said. “Yes, there’sreal concern for me. Certainly, there’s precedent for Atlanta Gasto use their name, but holy cow, that’s a name that’s been boughtand paid for by ratepayers for the last 75 to 80 years.”

Joe Fisher, Houston

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