Interior Secretary Ken Salazar this week takes his department's 2013 budget blueprint to Capitol Hill, where he will likely face Republican scrutiny over his conservation and energy development agenda for public lands and waters.

Salazar on Wednesday testifies before the House Natural Resources Committee. On Thursday he appears before the House Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee.

If last year's request is any indication, the budget will highlight the president's Great Outdoors initiative, which sees conservation as a cornerstone to increasing rural employment and connecting youth to nature.

Interior's $12 billion budget request last year was roughly flat. But Obama for the first time asked Congress to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the government's main vehicle for purchasing new lands and conserving others as easements. Congress provided a slight increase for the fund but still only about one-third of its maximum yearly amount of $900 million.

While the 48-year-old program enjoys bipartisan support, fiscal conservatives in both chambers have railed against proposals to enlarge the federal estate, particularly at a time of rising deficits.

Interior officials have argued that consolidating lands can connect habitats, spur new economic growth and reduce management costs by eliminating the patchwork of land ownership in the West.

Salazar in last year's budget also proposed generating new revenues through royalties on hardrock minerals and increased fees for oil and gas permitting, inspections and nonproducing leases, a proposal that fell flat among Republicans.

While Congress last month granted the agency's request to raise $62 million in new inspection fees from offshore drilling, Republicans remain opposed to increasing fees for oil and gas production, particularly at a time of high unemployment.

Republicans on both panels will likely press Salazar on the pace of Gulf of Mexico permitting by his newly created Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. Republicans and industry groups complain Gulf exploration remains stifled nearly two years after the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Democrats, too, will be watching the budget closely to see if the administration backtracks on its conservation agenda while pursuing Obama's State of the Union pledge to open up new lands and waters to oil and gas development.

Democrats have supported the agency's efforts to continue funding for renewable wind, solar and geothermal energy permitting on public lands.

Obama last year requested $73 million for the Bureau of Land Management to promote renewable energy in the West and set a goal to permit 9,000 megawatts on public lands by the end of last year.

While the agency fell short of that goal, the president last month said he expects Interior to permit 10,000 MW on public lands by the end of 2012.

Aside from budget matters, members of the Natural Resources Committee will likely raise a laundry list of other concerns over Interior's management of public lands. It may be one of the only times the secretary appears before the panel this year, said spokesman Spencer Pederson.

An issue sure to arise is Interior's draft five-year leasing plan, which, to Republicans' dismay, does not include sales in either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans through at least 2017. Salazar defended the plan at an oil and gas oversight hearing before the committee last November (Greenwire, Nov. 16, 2011).

Republicans will also likely raise objections to Salazar's plan to scale back oil shale development in the Rocky Mountain West and to craft new rules for hydraulic fracturing on public lands, Pederson said. Any types of tax increases or spending on new land purchases will also likely draw Republican fire, he said.

Interior staffers are scheduled to brief the committee on the budget tomorrow.

Schedule: The Natural Resources hearing is Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 10 a.m. in 1324 Longworth.

Witness: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

Schedule: The Appropriations Committee hearing is Thursday, Feb. 16, at 1:30 p.m. in 2359 Rayburn.

Witnesses: Salazar; David Hayes, deputy secretary, Interior; and Pamela Haze, deputy assistant secretary for budget, finance, performance and acquisition.