Networks NSW boss Vince Graham revealed on Friday nearly 1400 jobs will be cut from the regional provider.

The announcement came the same day Mr Graham met with union representatives.

Yesterday he flagged potential legal action against the Australian Energy Regulator, citing recent moves by ActewAGL in the nation’s capital to take the regulator to court.

The imminent job losses were not the fault of the NSW Government, he said, despite its granting of new powers to the AER in November 2012.

“You step back from this and say ‘whose decision is this?’” he said.

“This is a direct consequence of the huge decisions to make significant cuts by the regulator.

“There is only one organisation responsible for the savage cuts, and that is the Australian Energy Regulator.”

The chief executive offered some hope to frontline workers.

“At this stage I would expect that there would be a larger impact in administrative areas, compared to field workers,” he said.

Much of Essential Energy’s Port Macquarie workforce is information technology related. Before Mr Graham ascended to his current role, he was in charge of Endeavour Energy. That company and Ausgrid outsourced IT for cost effective reasons some years ago.

But Mr Graham indicated IT would not be the first to go.

“You don’t need a revolution,” he said.

“What you need is a sensible, progressive reading of the situation.

“There is no plan for outsourcing IT at this time.”

During Friday’s meeting with unions Mr Graham proposed a number of cost-cutting measures.

These included a “retraining and redeployment” program to transition “excess employees” to new jobs outside the company, and a revised redundancy policy that takes into account the future workforce.

Of some comfort to apprentices is another proposal Mr Graham pitched last week. This involves freezing the wages of all management and award employees, with the savings going to securing apprentices on fixed term award contracts.

“One of our primary concerns [is for] graduating apprentices,” he said.