The New York Times - USA (2020-06-25)

THE NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESSTHURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2020 N B3

ENVIRONMENT | HEALTH CARE

A federal judge has upheld a

Trump administration policy that

requires hospitals and health

insurers to publish their negoti-

ated prices for health services,

numbers that are typically kept

secret.

The policy is part of a major

push by the administration to

improve transparency in health

care. Insurers and health

providers usually negotiate deals

behind closed doors, and patients

rarely know the cost of services

until after the fact.

Administration officials said

more price transparency would

lead to lower and more predict-

able prices in an industry that

has huge ranges in what insurers

pay for services. A simple blood

test, for example, can cost $11 or

$1,000. Coronavirus tests show a

similar variation, with prices

from $27 to $2,315.

But in a lawsuit, the American

Hospital Association said the

administration did not have the

legal authority to require the

publication of negotiated prices,

arguing that the publication of

the prices could have perverse

effects. On Tuesday, the judge,

Carl Nichols, disagreed.

In his decision, Judge Nichols

found that the hospitals were

“attacking transparency meas-

ures generally” in a bid to limit

patients’ insight into medical

prices.

“Hospitals may be affected by

market changes and need to

respond to a market where con-

sumers are more empowered,”

he wrote, stating that was not

reason enough to “make the rule

unlawful.”

Judge Nichols, who was ap-

pointed to the D.C. District Court

last year, also rejected the hospi-

tals’ other arguments: that the

new rules would create over-

whelming administrative bur-

dens and that more transparency

might actually drive up prices.

“Traditional economic analysis

suggested to the agency that

informed customers would put

pressure on providers to lower

costs and increase the quality of

care,” Judge Nichols wrote.

Among health economists and

other experts, the effects of price

transparency policies remain

unsettled. The Trump adminis-

tration has argued that published

prices will help empower individ-

ual patients as well as employers

that buy health insurance for

their workers, creating market

pressure to discourage over-

charging.

But research on price trans-

parency in health care, which is

limited, has not shown large

effects: A study of a New Hamp-

shire law requiring published

prices for common services

showed very modest price reduc-

tions. And a body of research

from other fields, including Chil-

ean gasoline and Danish ready-

mix concrete, has found that

publishing negotiated prices can

sometimes backfire in markets

where there are few competitors,

raising prices.

Judge Nichols conceded that

“the evidence in the record is not

definitive” in proving that trans-

parency lowers prices, but that it

was “more persuasive than a

decades-old case study involving

Danish ready-mixed concrete

contracts.”

The hospital rule is part of the

administration’s bid to control

health costs through transparen-

cy, an effort that has become a

health policy priority for Presi-

dent Trump. The hospital rule

was preceded by an executive

order on price transparency in

health care unveiled at a White

House event where patients

spoke about their experiences

with surprise medical bills.

It is not the only part of that

transparency effort to encounter

legal obstacles. A federal appeals

court has thrown out another

rule that would have required

drug makers to include the price

of medications in television ad-

vertisements.

Alex Azar, the secretary of

Health and Human Services,

applauded the court’s decision:

“With today’s win, we will contin-

ue delivering on the president’s

promise to give patients easy

access to health care prices.

Especially when patients are

seeking needed care during a

public health emergency, it is

more important than ever that

they have ready access to the

actual prices of health care serv-

ices.”

The hospital association said it

would appeal the decision. “The

proposal does nothing to help

patients understand their out-of-

pocket costs,” said Melinda Hat-

ton, a senior vice president and

general counsel for the associa-

tion. “It also imposes significant

burdens on hospitals at a time

when resources are stretched

thin.”

The price transparency rule is

scheduled to go into effect in

January.

Prices in the health care industry vary widely in what insurers pay for

services. Covid-19 tests, for example, can range from $27 to $2,315.

KEVIN MOHATT/REUTERS

Hospitals Sued to Keep

Prices Secret. They Lost.

Carbon capture remains a con-

tentious idea. Coal, oil and gas

companies have backed the ap-

proach as less disruptive than

abandoning fossil fuels entirely.

Some Democrats and envi-

ronmentalists say the technology

could prove crucial for reducing

emissions from industrial sources

like cement or steel plants that are

difficult to clean up.

But critics warn that carbon

capture could just entrench fossil-

fuel use, particularly if the cap-

tured gas is mainly used to extract

more oil from the ground. And the

technology has been overhyped

before: In the 2000s, several early

carbon-capture projects backed

by the federal government were

never finished after billions of dol-

lars of investments and delays.

Those arguments are on display

in New Mexico, where the utilities

that own the San Juan Generating

Station, an 847-megawatt coal

plant, plan to abandon it in 2022 as

the state imposes stricter emis-

sions rules. Worried about job

WASHINGTON — Carbon capture, a
rarely tested strategy to fight cli-
mate change, is attracting grow-
ing interest in the United States
after the Trump administration
began clearing a longstanding
roadblock to subsidizing the tech-
nology.
In 2018, Congress approved a
lucrative tax break for companies
that trap carbon dioxide produced
by industrial sites before the gas
escapes into the atmosphere and
heats the planet. But for years, po-
tential carbon capture projects
stalled because the Internal Reve-
nue Service had yet to clarify how,
exactly, the tax credit worked.
That’s starting to change. In
May, the I.R.S. finally issued pro-
posed regulations, outlining the
rules companies would have to
follow when burying their emis-
sions underground, as well as the
penalties they would face if the
gas leaked back out.
“That was one of the keys we’ve
been waiting for,” said Robert
McLennan, chief executive of
Minnkota Power Cooperative, an
electric utility planning to retrofit
a coal plant in North Dakota. The
project aims to capture 3 million
tons of carbon dioxide per year,
equivalent to the pollution from
640,000 cars, and bury the gas
more than a mile underground. At
an estimated cost of $1 billion, he
said, the venture wouldn’t be fi-
nancially viable without the cred-
it.
But the complex effort still
faces hurdles.
Minnkota needs to find finan-
cial partners who can take advan-
tage of the tax break, and Mr.
McLennan said the I.R.S. rules
may need further changes to
make investors feel confident be-
fore they are finalized. The coro-
navirus pandemic has also dis-
rupted some engineering work.
“But, on balance, the rules are
helpful,” he said. “We’re optimistic
we can move forward.”
Across the country, companies
have proposed at least 30 carbon
capture projects to date. In Indi-
ana, Wabash Valley Resources
aims to produce greener fertilizer
by stashing its emissions under-
ground. In Texas, Occidental Pe-
troleum plans to capture carbon
dioxide from two ethanol plants
and inject the gas into its oil wells
to dislodge more crude, a process
known as enhanced oil recovery.
The company says emissions
from that oil would be partly offset
by the injected carbon dioxide
that would stay below ground.
For years, polluters had little in-
centive to trap their planet-warm-
ing emissions. The tax credit
shifts that calculus: It is worth up
to $50 for each ton of carbon diox-
ide captured and permanently
stored underground, and up to $35
per ton if the captured gas is bur-
ied during enhanced oil recovery.
For large projects, that break
could be worth hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars over the measure’s
12-year lifetime.

losses from the shutdown, a

nearby city, Farmington, has pro-

posed taking over the plant with

Enchant Energy and installing

carbon capture technology to

keep it running through 2035.

Peter Mandelstam, the chief op-

erating officer of Enchant, said

carbon capture could reduce the

plant’s emissions by 90 percent,

enabling it to comply with the

state’s climate rules. The $1.3 bil-

lion proposal aims to capture 6

million tons of carbon dioxide

each year and either sell the gas to

nearby oil fields or bury it in a sa-

line aquifer to claim the tax credit.

Critics have questioned

whether the company can build

the complicated project on time

and be financially viable. They

say they fear it may give false

hope to local coal workers and di-

vert investment from proven al-

ternatives like wind and solar

power.

“This is a community that’s

struggling and badly needs to di-

versify its economy, not double

down on risky coal technology,”

said Mike Eisenfeld of the San

Juan Citizens Alliance, a group

that advocates for clean air and

water.

Enchant plans to use technol-

ogy previously tested at a carbon

capture facility near Houston,

completed in 2017 with help from

an Energy Department grant.

There, exhaust from a coal plant is

run through chemicals that bind

to the carbon dioxide, which is

then piped to nearby oil wells.

But Enchant’s project would be

more than quadruple the size, and

the company still needs to negoti-

ate with the plant’s current own-

ers, find buyers for its electricity

and carbon, and bring in invest-

ors. Enchant recently began

working with Bank of America to

advise it through the process.

“I’m a big fan of more wind and

solar,” Mr. Mandelstam, a former

wind developer, said. “But we ha-

ven’t yet figured out how to run a

grid entirely on renewable energy.

Until that happens, this project of-

fers a reasonable way to keep the

lights on, preserve jobs and re-

duce the plant’s environmental

impact.”

It remains unclear how many

carbon capture projects will actu-

ally get built, particularly as

Covid-19 roils the economy and oil

prices plummet. The clock is tick-

ing: Under current rules, the

projects need to begin construc-

tion before 2024 to claim the tax

credit.

Keith Martin, a lawyer at Nor-

ton Rose Fulbright who special-

izes in tax-financing deals for

wind and solar, said he had seen

increased interest in carbon cap-

ture from investors looking to

lower their tax burdens. But, he

added, there are still technical as-

pects of the I.R.S. rules, like how

financial partnerships should be

structured, that need to be clari-

fied.

“The deals we are working on

are largely stalled at the moment,”

Mr. Martin said, “because the pro-

posed regulations did not answer

all the questions we have.”

In the wake of the pandemic,

some policymakers have said that

carbon capture may need a fur-

ther boost. In a recent infrastruc-

ture bill, House Democrats pro-

posed extending the tax credit’s

deadline by two years and allow-

ing direct payments to develop-

ers. Supporters hope that addi-

tional aid could help carbon cap-

ture go mainstream, much as fed-

eral subsidies have done for wind

and solar.

“Getting this first round of

projects up and running is criti-

cally important,” said Kurt

Waltzer, managing director at the

Clean Air Task Force, an advocacy

group. “But if carbon capture is

going to play a big role in decar-

bonization all over the world, in

places like China or India, we’ll

need to think on a much bigger

scale.”

Projects to Bury Carbon Dioxide Get a Lift

Leaders in Farmington, N.M., want to use carbon-capture technology to keep the San Juan Generating Station open.

ADRIA MALCOLM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By BRAD PLUMER

Top, carbon-capture equipment at a generating station in Thompsons, Texas. Above, the city of Farmington, which,
hoping to save jobs, wants to install similar equipment to keep the San Juan plant running through 2035.

ADRIA MALCOLM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

LUKE SHARRETT/BLOOMBERG

Clarifying a tax credit

that could help the

fossil fuel industry.

The Upshot provides news, analysis

and graphics about politics, policy

and everyday life.

nytimes.com/upshot

By SARAH KLIFF

and MARGOT SANGER-KATZ

‘Informed customers

would put pressure

on providers to lower

costs and increase

the quality of care.’

Judge Carl Nichols

Dennis F. Dunne, Esq., Andrew M. Leblanc, Esq., Tyson M. Lomazow, Esq.,

Lauren C.Doyle,Esq.,MILBANK LLP,55 HudsonYards,NewYork,NewYork

10001,Telephone: (212) 530-5000, Facsimile: (212) 530-5219,Counsel to

the Debtors and Debtors in Possession

UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

In re:

OneWeb Global Limited,et al.

Debtors.^1

)

)

)

Chapter 11

Case No.20-22437 (RDD)

(Jointly Administered)

NOTICE OF DEADLINES FOR THE FILING OF PROOFS OF

CLAIM,INCLUDING REQUESTS FOR PAYMENTS UNDER

SECTION 503(b)(9) OF THE BANKRUPTCY CODE

THE GENERAL BAR DATE IS AUGUST 11,2020

THE GOVERNMENTAL CLAIMS BAR DATE IS

SEPTEMBER 24,2020

PLEASETAKENOTICEOFTHEFOLLOWING:

Deadlines for Filing Proofs of Claim.On June 23, 2020, the United

StatesBankruptcyCourtfortheSouthernDistrictofNewYork(the“Court”)

entered an order (the “Bar Date Order”) establishing certain deadlines

for the filing of proofs of claim, including requests for payment under

section 503(b)(9) of the Bankruptcy Code, in the chapter 11 cases of the

following debtors and debtors in possession (together, the “Debtors”):

DEBTOR, CASE NO.:OneWeb Global Limited, 20-22437; OneWeb

Holdings LLC, 20-22434; WorldVu JV Holdings LLC, 20-22435; WorldVu

Development LLC, 20-22436; OneWeb Communications Ltd, 20-22438;

WorldVu Satellites Ltd, 20-22439; OneWeb Limited, 20-22440; 1021823

BCLtd.,20-22441;NetworkAccessAssociatesLtd,20-22442;OneWebChile

SpA,20-22443;WorldVu Australia Pty Ltd,20-22444;WorldVu Unipessoal

Lda, 20-22445; OneWeb Norway AS, 20-22446; OneWeb ApS, 20-22447;

OneWeb Network Access Holdings Ltd,20-22448;OneWeb GK,20-22449;

OneWebLtd,20-22450;WorldVuMexicoS.DeR.L.deCV,2022451;WorldVu

SouthAfrica(Pty)Ltd,20-22452.

The Bar Dates. Pursuant to the Bar Date Order,allentities (except

governmental units), including individuals, partnerships, estates, and

trusts who have a claim or potential claim against the Debtors that arose

prior to March 27, 2020 (the “Petition Date”), no matter how remote or

contingent such right to payment or equitable remedy may be,including

requests for payment under section 503(b)(9) of the Bankruptcy Code,

MUST FILE A PROOF OF CLAIM on or beforeAugust 11, 2020, at 5:00

p.m.,prevailing EasternTime(the“General Bar Date”). Governmental

entities who havea claim or potential claim againstthe Debtors that arose

prior to the Petition Date,no matter how remote or contingent such right

to payment or equitable remedy may be, MUST FILE A PROOF OF CLAIM

on or beforeSeptember 24, 2020, at 5:00 p.m., prevailing Eastern

Time(the“GovernmentalBarDate”).

ANY PERSON OR ENTITY WHO FAILS TO FILE A PROOF OF CLAIM,

INCLUDING ANY REQUEST FOR PAYMENT UNDER SECTION 503(b)(9)

OF THE BANKRUPTCY CODE ON OR BEFORE THE GENERAL BAR DATE OR

GOVERNMENTAL BAR DATE, AS APPLICABLE, SHALL NOT BE TREATED AS A

CREDITOR WITH RESPECT TO SUCH CLAIM FOR THE PURPOSES OF VOTING

ANDDISTRIBUTIONONANYCHAPTER11PLAN.

Filing a Proof of Claim. Each Proof of Claim must be filed,including

supporting documentation,by electronic submission through the website

of the Debtors’ claims agent at https://www.omniagentsolutions.com/

onewebglobal,or if submitted through non-electronic means by U.S.Mail

orotherhanddeliverysystem,soastobeactually receivedbyOmnionor

beforetheGeneralBarDateortheGovernmentalBarDateatthefollowing

address:IF BY MAIL:OneWeb Global Limited,et al.Claims Processing,c/o

Omni Agent Solutions, 5955 De Soto Ave., Suite 100, Woodland Hills, CA

91367; OrIF BY HAND:United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern

District of New York,300 Quarropas Street,White Plains,New York 10601-

4140.

PROOFSOFCLAIMSUBMITTEDBYFACSIMILEOR

ELECTRONICMAILWILLNOTBEACCEPTED.

Contents of Proofs of Claim.Each proof of claim must: (i) be written

in English; (ii) include a claim amount denominated in United States

dollars;(iii) clearly identify the Debtor against which the claim is asserted;

(iv) conform substantially with the Proof of Claim Form provided by

the Debtors or Official Form 410; (v) be signed by the claimant or by an

authorized agent or legal representative of the claimant;and (vi) include

as attachments any and all supporting documentation on which the claim

is based.Please notethat each proof of claim must state a claim against

only one Debtor and clearly indicate the specific Debtor against which

the claim is asserted. To the extent more than one Debtor is listed on the

proof of claim, a proof of claim is treated as if filed only against the first

listed Debtor, or if a proof of claim is otherwise filed without identifying

a specific Debtor,the proof of claim may be deemed as filed only against

OneWeb Global Limited. Proofs of Claim must not contain complete social

security numbers or taxpayer identification numbers (only the last four

digits),acompletebirthdate(onlytheyear),thenameofaminor(onlythe

minor’s initials) or a financial account number (only the last four digits of

suchfinancialaccount).

Electronic Signatures Permitted.Proofs of claim signed by the

claimant or an authorized agent or legal representative of the claimant

using an electronic signature will be deemed acceptable for purposes of

claims administration. Copies of proofs of claim or proofs of claim sent by

facsimileorelectronicmailwillnotbeaccepted.

Section 503(b)(9) Requests for Payment.Any proof of claim

and/or priority asserting a claim arising under section 503(b)(9) of the

Bankruptcy Code must also (i) include the value of the goods delivered to

and received by the Debtors in the twenty (20) days prior to the Petition

Date;(ii) attach any documentation identifying the particular invoices for

which such 503(b)(9) claim is being asserted;and (iii) attach documenta-

tionofanyreclamationdemandmadetotheDebtorsundersection546(c)

oftheBankruptcyCode(ifapplicable).

Additional Information.If you have any questions regarding the

claims process and/or you wish to obtain a copy of the Bar Date Notice,a

proofofclaimformorrelateddocumentsyoumaydosoby:(i)callingthe

Debtors’ restructuring hotline at (866) 680-8121 (toll free); and/

or(ii)visitingtheDebtors’restructuringwebsiteat:https://www.

omniagentsolutions.com/onewebglobal.

(^1) The Debtors in these cases, along with the last four digits of each
Debtor’s federal tax identification number, if any, are: OneWeb Global
Limited (N/A); OneWeb Holdings LLC (5429); OneWeb Communications
Limited (9487);WorldVu Satellites Limited (7802);WorldVu Development
LLC (9067); WorldVu JV Holdings LLC (N/A); 1021823 B.C. LTD (8609);
Network Access Associates Limited (8566); OneWeb Limited (8662);
WorldVuSouthAfrica(Pty)Ltd.(1867);OneWebChileSpA(2336);WorldVu
AustraliaPtyLtd.(5436);WorldVuUnipessoalLda.(2455);OneWebNorway
AS(0209);OneWebApS(9191);OneWebNetworkAccessHoldingsLimited
(8580);OneWeb G.K.(1396);OneWeb Ltd (8661);WorldVu Mexico S.DE R.
L.DE C.V.(1234). The Debtors’headquarters is located at 195 Wood Lane,
WestWorksBuilding,3rdFloor,London,W127FQ,UK.