Jerry Moran: “I thank my good friend and colleague. Mr. Chairman, the U.S. Atlantic fleet is based at the Norfolk Naval Base and…”

“I thank my good friend and colleague. Mr. Chairman, the U.S. Atlantic fleet is based at the Norfolk Naval Base and operates in the same waters that this legislation proposes to sell for oil and gas development. Does the Republican majority really want to jeopardize those thousands and thousands of jobs that are identified with that naval base? According to a report issued by the Secretary of Defense, there should be no lease sales in 72 percent of the proposed lease area that this bill directs be sold to oil and gas companies because it is in conflict with live ordnance, air-surface missile, and gunnery exercises, shipboard qualification trials, carrier qualifications, and development and operational follow-on testing and evaluation, and an additional 5 percent would interfere with aerial operations and should not host permanent surface structures such as drilling rigs. In other words, more than three quarters of the area that this legislation directs be sold to oil and gas companies is in conflict with our national security interests, and a good deal of the remaining 22 percent is within shipping lanes of the country's two busiest commercial ports, Hampton Roads and Baltimore. Mr. Chairman, our coastal waters are a shared resource that host a number of competing and sometimes incompatible uses.…”