The North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) serves as an industry forum for the development and promotion of standards promoting a seamless marketplace for wholesale and retail natural gas and electricity in North America. Standards developed include model business practices, contracts, and scheduling procedures.
As electronic nominations and movement of gas across an interconnected grid became the industry norm, the need arose for standardization between the various interconnecting pipelines. This is especially important since marketers often need to move gas across several pipelines. Historically, pipelines had varying rules and procedures. For instance, nominations might have been due at noon on a downstream pipeline, yet not due upstream until 5 p.m., meaning that a shipper would need to nominate gas before knowing whether there was capacity available upstream.
Out of this confusion was born the Gas Industry Standards Board, or GISB. GISB was a voluntary organization whose mission was to develop and maintain standards for business transactions in the gas industry. The goal of GISB was to increase the efficiency of the natural gas system in the U.S., thereby making natural gas a more attractive competitor in the marketplace. The efforts of GISB have done a lot to further the development of an integrated national pipeline grid that uses standardized rules across multiple pipelines.
On January 1, 2002, GISB was absorbed into a new organization, the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB). NAESB is designed to expand the role that GISB played in the gas industry to provide standards for both gas and electric industries.