Tiger Natural Gas, Inc. (B-423744, B-423744.2, B-423744.3)

You should care.

Categories: Technical acceptability, discussions, reverse auction

Date: 10 December 2025

URL: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423744,b-423744.2,b-423744.3

Tiger Natural Gas protested DLA Energy’s award of natural-gas supply contracts for California requirements to Penn Oak and NRG. GAO sustained the protest in part after finding the record did not adequately support the agency’s conclusion that the awardees were technically acceptable.

The agency tried to justify Penn Oak’s acceptability based on a teaming arrangement and other support, but the evaluation record produced in the protest was too thin—and too heavily redacted—to show a reasonable, solicitation-consistent technical review. That was enough to sink the acceptability findings. But Tiger lost its separate attacks on the discussion process. GAO held the solicitation did not bar the agency from conducting both technical discussions and a reverse auction, and the agency was not required to tell Tiger its initial price was high before the auction.

The result: protest sustained on the technical evaluation, denied on the discussions issues.

Digest

1. Protest challenging the agency's rating of awardees as technically acceptable is sustained where the record produced by the agency fails to demonstrate that the agency's evaluation was reasonable and consistent with the terms of the solicitation.
2. Protest that the agency improperly engaged in discussions regarding technical proposals where the agency intended to conduct a reverse auction is denied where the solicitation did not prohibit the agency from both having discussions with offerors and conducting a reverse auction for final price submissions.
3. Protest that discussions were not meaningful because the agency did not discuss the protester's initial price is denied where the protester has not shown that the agency was required to advise the protester its price was high prior to conducting a reverse auction.