September 19, 1984

A Washington lobbyist was named by Mayor Koch yesterday to head New York City's troubled Human Resources Administration. The lobbyist, George Gross, the 50- year-old director of Federal relations at the National League of Cities and a veteran member of Congressional committee staffs, will take over the city agency with the largest budget, as well as responsibility for dealing with some of the city's most difficult social problems. ''I know him, I know him,'' Mayor Koch responded when asked why he had chosen Mr. Gross. The Mayor said he first met Mr. Gross in 1969, when Mr. Koch entered Congress, and had always admired him as a ''superb technician.'' A Budget of $4 Billion ''I believe he has the expertise,'' Mr. Koch said at a City Hall news conference. ''But only time will tell whether my confidence will be well placed.''

Homeowners who heat with natural gas can expect to face only slight price increases this winter despite the impending removal of Federal price controls on more than half the nation's production. The decontrol, due to occur on Jan. 1, is the culmination of what is by far the biggest step toward free- market pricing of gas since a landmark Supreme Court decision first imposed price controls at the wellhead in 1954. For most of the period since 1978, when the law for phased decontrol of so-called new gas was enacted, it was widely thought that when this gas was free from price restriction in 1985, there would be a sharp increase in its price. Recently, however, it has become clear that no price surge will take place soon, and that consumers face neither sharp price increases nor shortages in the foreseeable future.

A Soviet journalist who spent the past year in Britain turned up here today and said that he was abducted in 1983 by British agents while attending the Venice Film Festival and had been forced to make anti-Soviet statements. The journalist, Oleg G. Bitov, 52 years old, spoke at a news conference called by the Soviet authorities. He had disappeared in London last month. (In London, the British Government said Mr. Bitov came to Britain of his own free will last year and it called his statements in Moscow ''absurd and offensive.'') At the news conference, Mr. Bitov said that he had planned to return to the Soviet Union all along. He said he had waited until he won the confidence of his purported captors and had then simply bought an airline ticket and boarded a plane.

Argentina completed the technical work today on an agreement with the International Monetary Fund that would enable it to secure a 15-month standby loan of $1.4 billion, according to Bernardo Grinspun, Argentina's Economy Minister. ''There is an agreement with the staff,'' Mr. Grinspun announced at a news conference today before leaving on a trip to the United States. He said the understanding had been worked out between an I.M.F. mission and the Argentine Government and must be approved by the agency's 21-member executive board. (In Washington, however, a senior Reagan Administration official was skeptical of Mr. Grinspun's announcement, noting that Argentine officials have reported progress in negotiations with the I.M.F. before, only to recant later. And an I.M.F. spokesman declined to comment under the agency's standing policy on whether an agreement had been reached.)

The Public Service Company of New Hampshire has told the Securities and Exchange Commission that its share of the cost of finishing the Seabrook nuclear plant could be twice as high as previously estimated. But a spokesman for the utility said yesterday that this was the high end of the possible range and that Public Service did not regard the cost as certain to go that high. The company, which owns 35.5 percent of the troubled project, said in a preliminary filing for a stock registration that its remaining cost could run as high as $730 million, although it estimated in July that the cost would be $350 million. The July estimate put the plant's total cost at $4.5 billion.