Washington, D.C., started it all in 2006 with legislation that required certain privately owned buildings to meet LEED standards. Boston quickly followed suit in early 2007, and Los Angeles and Dallas have both passed similar ordinances.

Although the ordinances vary in scope and timeframe as well as stringency, none of them requires buildings to achieve actual LEED certification. This makes the cities responsible for examining building plans for green attributes, presenting financial and organizational challenges.

Although the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the organization behind the LEED Rating System, has noted that LEED-certifiable buildings may not perform as well as LEED-certified buildings, for municipalities, requiring certification presents political and legal challenges.

According to Krista Kline, the urban planning and design coordinator for Los Angeles, the City did not require certification because it is “expensive and time-consuming, and we wanted buy-in from the development community” for the overall green goals. Projects that pursue LEED Silver certification or higher are eligible for expedited permitting that saves between one and six months in the process. Kline noted that requiring certification would make building permits or occupancy certificates contingent on the decisions of USGBC. That situation is legally untenable, explains Kline. “We didn’t want to give USGBC control over our land use.” Although municipalities could incorporate green building requirements similar to LEED into their building codes, the rating system offers both recognition and choice for developers.

“People like LEED as a standard,” said Zaida Basora, AIA, assistant director of administration and architectural services for Dallas and a past board member for USGBC, “so we felt that it was better to go ahead and use it.”

Using LEED as a standard also makes it easy for developers to pursue certification for buildings if they want to do so, since many of the documentation requirements have already been met. In addition to its popularity and marketing cachet, LEED allows developers to choose which credits to pursue.

“We wanted to give flexibility to the development community and didn’t want to quash creativity,” said Kline.

Without certification through USGBC, however, cities must find ways to verify that buildings aren’t ducking requirements. In Boston, where buildings larger than 50,000 ft2 (4,600 m2) must meet LEED standards at the Certified level, an interagency permit-review process has evolved to encourage integrated design and ensure that large buildings are meeting green requirements. All members of a project team meet with representatives from several City agencies before a project is submitted for permit review as well as throughout the design process. The team must submit documentation to the City, approved by a LEED accredited professional (LEED-AP), that shows a project has met LEED requirements.

Coordinating several city agencies as well as project team members represents a shift from the typical permit review process and has not been simple. “There was a learning curve, and it’s challenging, but it’s a steadily improving thing,” said Barbra Batshalom, executive director of The Green Roundtable in Boston, a nonprofit. The biggest challenge, according to Batshalom, was educating city staff about green building and the LEED checklist so that all projects could receive similar assessments. The result has been a more streamlined, uniform review process.

In Los Angeles, the City had to figure out—quickly—how to include green building review in its permit process with little added funding. For now, front-line staff members are being trained to look for a LEED-AP on the project team and the basic requirements for the LEED checklist. Higher-level staff members are being trained to read the checklist and plans more closely. “We know it’s not perfect,” Kline said of this limited review, “but it’s what we could come up with without being punitive.”

To ensure green requirements are being met, every seventh project will be audited by USGBC; if the city finds a lot of projects would not have been certified, it will consider changing the ordinance. Both Los Angeles and Dallas plan to track energy and water use in the new buildings to see if the green building requirements are making a difference.

Source: McGraw Hill

Dallas, Texas — At a time when the economy is on a seemingly constant downslide, it is hard to know exactly where the real estate market in any given city is going. Home sales everywhere are down and foreclosures are occurring in record numbers. New construction and commercial real estate sales have slowed down tremendously and Realtors all over the country are working hard with potential home buyers to invest in a home and get home sales back on the incline.

However, for the commercial real estate market in Texas, things are continuing to look up; particularly in the commercial real estate sector. According to Lewis Realty Advisors, a real estate valuation and consulting firm located in Houston, Texas, major metropolitan areas around the state are continuing to post gains in significant areas such as employment and population, two of the most important groups in terms of business.

David Lewis, who is the founder of the company, tells Dallas Business Journal that while he does not feel as though Texas is not immune to some of the same economic problems that has affected other regions of the country, he does see many positive trends in the area of real estate and in the general economy of the state of Texas.

The report names Dallas/Forth Worth, Austin, Houston and San Antonio as top gainers in terms of job growth in the nation. Coinciding with those numbers are increased numbers of population growth for all four cities as well. The economy in Texas relies mainly on healthy education, technology and health care sectors. However, the energy sector is what continues to drive the Texas economy, with a large presence in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

Lewis’ view of the numbers is that because Texas is seeing overall growth, it is a signal that Texas real estate is performing just as well and likely will continue the trend for the foreseeable future.

Source: NewsWire

LONDON -(Dow Jones)- BP PLC (BP) and its partners Monday got a green light to kick off one of Angola’s largest oil and gas investments, worth $10 billion.

The news come as the country is steadily ramping up production after becoming Africa’s largest oil producer, bypassing Nigeria where violence has hampered output.

The announcement is also good news for U.K. giant BP, whose ambitions have been challenged by a dispute in Russia and delays in the U.S.

In a statement, BP said state-owned Sociedade Nacional de Combustíveis de Angola, or Sonangol, had authorized it and its partners to develop a series of deepwater oil discoveries in offshore Angola’s Block 31.

Construction work is expected to start during 2008 with first oil planned in 2011 and building to a plateau of about 150,000 barrels a day by 2012, BP said.

Natural gas production is expected to plateau at 185 million cubic feet a day, a BP spokesman added.

The company and its partners will invest $10 billion in the developments, most of it in the four years prior to the plateau production, a person familiar with BP’s plans said.

BP is the operator and 26.7% owner of the license. The other shareholders in Block 31 are an Exxon Mobil Corp. unit with 25%, Sonangol with 20%, Statoil ASA (STO) with 13.3%, Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO) with 10% and a Total SA (TOT) subsidiary with 5%. Sonangol is the concessionaire.

BP has invested heavily in Angola, an African country that has proved more secure than Nigeria, and where the company’s fortunes contrast with setbacks elsewhere.

In Russia, BP is under attack following a dispute with its local partners in joint-venture TNK-BP Holding (TNBP.RS) while it has suffered a three years delay with its giant platform Thunder Horse in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

By contrast, BP’s 200,000 barrels-a-day Greater Plutonio met its deadline when it started producing at the end of 2007. The most recent project will also help Angola’s plans to ramp up of its production. Angola’s Petroleum Minister

Desiderio Costa said earlier this month that oil output is already expected to rise to 2 million barrels a day in 2008, from a current 1.9 million barrels a day.Source:  CNN Money

As President Bush calls for repealing a ban on drilling off most of the coast of the United States, a shortage of ships used for deep-water offshore drilling promises to impede any rapid turnaround in oil exploration and supply.

In recent years, this global shortage of drill-ships has created a critical bottleneck, frustrating energy company executives and constraining their ability to exploit known reserves or find new ones. Slow growth in oil supplies, at a time of soaring demand, has been a major factor in the spike of oil and gasoline prices.

Mr. Bush called on Congress Wednesday to end a longstanding federal ban on offshore drilling and open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, arguing that the steps were needed to lower gasoline prices and bolster national security. But even as oil trades at more than $135 a barrel — up from $68 a year ago — the world’s existing drill-ships are booked solid for the next five years. Some oil companies have been forced to postpone exploration while waiting for a drilling rig, executives and analysts said.

Demand is so high that shipbuilders, the biggest of whom are in Asia, have raised prices since last year by as much as $100 million a vessel to about half a billion dollars.

“The crunch on rigs is everywhere,” said Alberto Guimaraes, a senior executive at Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company that has discovered some of the most promising offshore oil but has been unable to get at it.

“Almost 100 percent of the oil companies are constrained in their investment program because there is no rig available,” he said.