United States Synthetic Fuels Corporation's Project Selection Guidelines Need Clarification

The project selection guidelines of the Synthetic Fuels Corporation (SFC) provide information on the process for evaluating proposals, the criteria to be used, and their relationship to the requirements of the Energy Security Act. GAO provided SFC with comments and recommendations for clarifying the guidelines and for implementing the selection process.

It appears that the guidelines are consistent with the Energy Security Act. However, GAO found that there is concern that they are so vague that industry sponsors may not have enough guidance to adequately prepare their proposals. It is unclear how SFC will use two levels of review consisting of project evaluation criteria and program-level evaluation criteria to achieve the Act's goals. Projects could compete among themselves as a group, or they could compete within smaller groups but potential sponsors should know the ground rules under which they must compete. Inherent with any two-level selection process is the fact that special care must be taken to ensure process integrity.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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