Tesoro Hawaii Corp. v. United States

58 Fed. Cl. 65, 2003 U.S. Claims LEXIS 296, 2003 WL 22416288
CourtUnited States Court of Federal Claims
DecidedSeptember 15, 2003
DocketNo. 02-704C
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 58 Fed. Cl. 65 (Tesoro Hawaii Corp. v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Court of Federal Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Tesoro Hawaii Corp. v. United States, 58 Fed. Cl. 65, 2003 U.S. Claims LEXIS 296, 2003 WL 22416288 (uscfc 2003).

Opinion

OPINION

BRUGGINK, Judge.

This is an action arising out of the use of an economic price adjustment clause in a series of competitively-awarded fuel supply [67]*67contracts. Defendant’s October 15, 2002 motion for partial summary judgment and plaintiffs’ December 12, 2002 cross-motion are now pending. The parties were allowed to file supplemental briefing. For the reasons set out below, plaintiffs’ motion is granted in part, and denied in part. Defendant’s motion is denied.

BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs, Tesoro Hawaii and Tesoro Alaska, are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Tesoro Petroleum Corporation,1 which operates five refineries in the western United States. Plaintiffs entered into at least thirty-seven contracts with the Defense Energy Support Center (“DESC”)2 to supply military jet fuel to the government from 1983 through 1999.3 DESC is a field activity of the Defense Logistics Agency (“DLA”) which is a component of the Department of Defense. Among other things, DESC purchases refined fuels for the military worldwide. Tesoro’s contracts were awarded pursuant to different government programs including (1) the domestic bulk fuels program, (2) the overseas bulk fuels program, and (3) the “cool barge” program. Each contract with plaintiffs contained one of DESC’s Economic Price Adjustment (“EPA”) clauses, which modified fuel prices according to certain market-based indexes.4 DESC used several different versions of the agency-drafted EPA clause B19.33, which provides that “[t]he prices payable under this contract for listed items shall be the base price for the listed item increased or decreased per like unit of measure from the base reference price.”

From 1984 to 1994, Tesoro’s domestic bulk fuels contracts contained an EPA clause that indexed the contract prices to prices reported in Petroleum Market Monthly (“PMM”), a publication issued monthly by the Energy Information Agency, a division of the Department of Energy. Beginning in 1995, largely in response to this court’s decision in MAP-CO Alaska Petroleum, Inc. v. United States, 27 Fed.Cl. 405 (1992), discussed infra, Teso-ro’s domestic bulk fuel contracts contained an EPA clause based on regional average prices reported in a widely used industry publication, Platt’s Oilgram Price Report (“Platt’s”), rather than PMM. All of Tesoro’s contracts awarded under the overseas bulk fuels program contained a Platt’s-based EPA clause, and all of Tesoro’s contracts awarded under the “cool barge” program contained EPA clauses based upon either the Oil Price Information Service or the Lundberg Letter.

In December of 1992, this court ruled in MAPCO that DESC’s PMM-based EPA clauses were inconsistent with the Federal Acquisitions Regulations (“FAR”) and, therefore, unauthorized. Id. at 416. In January 1993, the Acting Executive Director of the DLA granted an individual deviation for the use of the PMM-based EPA clause in contracts awarded pursuant to solicitation DLA600-93-R-0061. Tesoro’s contract [68]*68D LA600-93-D-0519 was awarded pursuant to that solicitation. In January of 1995, DESC requested a permanent revision to the DLA Acquisitions Regulation to expressly permit the use of such EPA clauses not withstanding any other FAR or DLA regulation. On February 28, 1995, DLA published the proposed revision to the DLA procurement directive in the Federal Register, providing a 60-day comment period.

In March of 1995, while its request for a permanent revision was pending, DESC was granted an individual deviation to allow it to use the Platt’s-based EPA clause in solicitation SP0600-95-R-0161 and Tesoro was awarded contract SP0600-95-D-0505 pursuant to that solicitation. In October of 1995, the Director of Defense Procurement granted DESC’s request for a class deviation for the use of Platt’s-based EPA clauses and Tesoro was awarded three contracts— SP0600-96-D-0496, SP0600-99-D-0524, and SP0600-99-D-0538 — after the date that class deviation was granted.5 In August of 1999, the final rule revising the DLAR in accordance with DESC’s 1995 request was published in the Federal Register.

In its motion for summary judgment, the government makes the following arguments: (1) As to the 31 contracts containing standard EPA clauses, we should reject, or at least distinguish, the legal conclusions found previously by this court concerning such clauses; (2) Even if the standard EPA clauses are found illegal, Tesoro is unable, as a matter of law, to establish any harm resulting from the illegal clauses; (3) Even if Tesoro was harmed, any claim it may have had was waived by failing to object to the EPA clauses at an earlier time; and (4) the five contracts containing deviations are consistent with the FAR and are, consequently, not illegal.

In their cross-motion for summary judgment, plaintiffs argue that the standard EPA clauses used here, as well as those granted through individual and class deviations, are illegal. They ask us to strike all such clauses from the contracts and award them, as a quantum valebant remedy, the difference between the fair market value price of the fuel delivered to DESC and what they were actually paid.

DISCUSSION

I. Legality of the standard EPA clauses

Initially, the parties disagree over whether the standard EPA clauses are legal. This dispute, however, as far as clauses B19.33 and B 19.22 are concerned, has been resolved by several prior decisions considering equivalent contracts. Phoenix Petroleum Co. v. United States, No. 97-315C, slip op. (Fed.Cl. April 30, 2003); La Gloria Oil & Gas Co. v. United States, 56 Fed.Cl. 211 (2003); Gold Line Refining, Ltd. v. United States, 54 Fed. Cl. 285 (2002); Barrett Refining Corp. v. United States, 42 Fed.Cl. 128 (1998); MAP-CO, 27 Fed.Cl. at 407-16.

In MAPCO, this court found that B19.33 and a similar PMM-based EPA clause, B19.22, were inconsistent with the FAR. MAPCO, 27 Fed.Cl. at 408. Recognizing that “applicable provisions of the FAR are incorporated into every federal government procurement contract, and have the same effect as if they were set forth in the contract itself,” we examined whether DESC’s standard EPA clauses B19.33 and B 19.22 were consistent with the applicable provisions of the FAR and found them wanting. See id. FAR § 16.203-1, entitled “Description,” explicitly provides that economic price adjustments must fit into one of three identifiable types: (1) adjustments based on established prices; (2) adjustments based on actual costs of labor or material; or (3) adjustments based on cost indexes of labor or material. 48 C.F.R. § 16.203-1. In MAPCO, we found that clauses B19.33 and B19.22, which used PMM as a price escalator, did not fit into one of these three types, and were therefore illegal. MAPCO, 27 Fed.Cl. at 416.

The government argued in MAPCO that clauses B19.33 and B19.22 satisfied FAR § 16.203-l(a) because these EPA clauses, [69]*69providing for price adjustments indexed to PMM, were “adjustments based on established prices.” Id. at 408.

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