San Diego-based Sempra Energy announced Wednesday a series of senior management moves. The top move was to promote the head of its two California utilities, Debra Reed, to a newly created executive vice president position at the holding company, reporting to Sempra CEO Donald Felsinger.

“A critical part of the success of the Sempra Energy companies over the years has been their ability to adapt to the needs of the changing marketplace and develop a dynamic leadership team with broad experience,” Felsinger said. “We and our subsidiaries are making these organizational changes to create a stronger engine for business growth and leadership development.”

All of the organizational changes are effective March 29.

Reed, 53, president and CEO of utilities San Diego Gas and Electric Co. (SDG&E) and Southern California Gas Co. SoCalGas since 2006, joined SoCalGas in 1978 as an energy systems engineer. From 1984 to 2006 she served in a series of positions at the utilities, including vice president of human resources and vice president of administrative services for SoCalGas; president of SoCalGas operations for residential, small-commercial and industrial customers; and CFO of SDG&E and SoCalGas.

The rest of the changes involve moving existing executives among the holding company, utilities and independent power generation subsidiary. There will now be separate CEOs of the two California utilities — Jessie Knight,Jr., becomes CEO of SDG&E; Michael Niggli will be COO at the combination utility; Michael Allman will be the CEO of SoCalGas; Anne Smith will be COO of the gas utility; Jeffrey Martin will be CEO of Sempra Generation; and Steven Davis will become the holding company’s vice president of investor relations.

©Copyright 2010Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.