The Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives put the interests of big oil companies ahead of national security and Virginia’s economy on Thursday, Congressman Gerry Connolly said.

The House majority opposed an amendment offered by Connolly to ensure that oil drilling off Virginia’s coast would not impede numerous U.S. Navy and national security activities or threaten the $10 billion injected annually into the Commonwealth’s economy from the naval presence in Hampton Roads.

Connolly’s amendment, supported by Virginia Congressmen Jim Moran and Bobby Scott and Maryland Congressman John Sarbanes, did not preclude oil drilling off the coast.  The amendment merely strengthened language in the GOP offshore oil drilling bill to require the President, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, to certify that oil drilling activity in Lease Sale site 220 will not conflict with naval exercises off Virginia’s coast.

Speaking on the House floor, Connolly highlighted a Department of Defense report that said 78 percent of the area within the Lease Sale 220 site off Hampton Roads is currently used by the Navy for a variety of military training, ordinance testing, and other activities. Those activities currently include live release and impact of air and surface missiles and bombs, sensitive undersea and surface operations, shipboard systems testing, evaluation, and qualification trials, and other critical operations.

“We want to make sure our all-important base in Norfolk, the world’s largest naval base, can continue its vital national defense mission, as it has for more than a century, while adding tens of billions of dollars to our Virginia economy,” Connolly said.  “I was surprised that all but a handful of Republicans in the House opted to oppose this amendment, particularly since it was designed to provide nothing more than a bit of insurance to make sure national defense, the naval operations out of Hampton Roads, and Virginia’s economy are protected if offshore drilling proceeds.”

Connolly said, “The idea that the House Republicans would reject safeguards to protect the hundreds of billions of dollars in federal investments that have been made in the Norfolk Naval Base over the last century is ludicrous.  We saw just recently that the elite Navy Seals who conducted the mission to take out Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan are based right in Hampton Roads.”

HERE IS THE TEXT OF THE CONNOLLY AMENDMENT:

AMENDMENT TO H.R. 1230, AS ORDERED

REPORTED

OFFERED BY MR. CONNOLLY OF VIRGINIA

Page 4, beginning at line 19, strike ‘‘if the President,

through the Secretary of Defense, determines that

drilling activity on that tract would create an unreasonable

conflict’’ and insert ‘‘until the President, in consultation

with the Secretary of Defense, certifies that

drilling activity on that tract would not create a conflict’’