The Obama administration will send its two top offshore energy officials to Capitol Hill this week to defend budgets aimed at strengthening drilling safety and expanding offshore wind, among other goals.

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Tommy Beaudreau and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Director James Watson will each appear before House Appropriations and Natural Resources committee panels Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.

It will be Watson's first time testifying before Congress since he replaced Michael Bromwich at the helm of BSEE in December (Greenwire, Nov. 14, 2011).

Watson, a former Coast Guard admiral who served as the federal on-scene coordinator for more than a month during the Deepwater Horizon spill in summer 2010, will defend BSEE's $222 million fiscal 2013 budget request, a $25 million increase over current funding levels.

More than half of the budget would be covered through the collection of inspection and other fees that would rise nearly $4 million above current levels, requiring just over $20 million in additional appropriations.

The budget calls for more than $4 million in new funding to hire, train and support new staff to conduct environmental inspections, safety audits and investigations and enforcement. An additional increase of $2.3 million would be used to launch an e-inspection service, as recommended by an offshore safety board.

The agency conducts more than 20,000 inspections annually of roughly 3,400 offshore oil and gas drilling and production facilities.

Budget aside, much of the hearing before the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee will explore the agency's issuance of drilling permits nearly two years after the BP PLC spill, which claimed the lives of 11 men and spilled nearly 5 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.

Committee spokesman Spencer Pederson said Republican members will examine the impact on jobs and local economies that are still reeling from a "de facto moratorium" on exploration.

While the pace of deepwater permitting has increased significantly, the most recent Interior Department data show production of oil was down 17 percent in the Gulf in fiscal 2011 (Greenwire, Feb. 27). The dip is almost certainly related to the deepwater drilling moratorium imposed for much of summer and fall of 2010, observers note.

Production is expected to rebound significantly, if predictions by the Energy Information Administration prove correct (Greenwire, Jan. 27).

Watson may be pressed to explain how he plans to accelerate the pace of permitting.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) last week twice cited a report by a New Orleans-based business group that found small and medium-sized drilling companies are cutting employee salaries and that Interior in recent months has been issuing far fewer deepwater permits than it did before the spill.

For Beaudreau, discussion will likely revolve around Interior's five-year leasing plan, which envisions about a dozen Gulf leases and limited leasing in Alaska, but no leases off the Atlantic or Pacific coasts.

The draft proposal has drawn fire mostly from Republicans and some Democrats who argued new exploration opportunities would increase jobs, economic development and energy security.

The administration has argued drilling is opposed by governors on the West Coast and that the Atlantic Ocean lacks the infrastructure to support exploration and oil spill cleanup.

The 2013 budget request for BOEM is $164.1 million, a $3.3 million increase over current levels. More than half of the budget would be offset by collections from rental receipts, including a proposed fee on nonproducing leases designed to encourage earlier production.

The nonproducing lease fee, which has been strongly opposed by Republicans and the oil industry, would generate $13 million in 2013 and $783 million over the next decade, Interior said.

BOEM, which administers 6,560 active oil and gas leases on roughly 35 million acres, oversees more than 10 percent of domestic natural gas production and about 30 percent of domestic oil production.

The 2013 request includes $34.4 million, an increase of $1.4 million from current levels, to support the siting and construction of offshore wind farms and other renewable technologies. The agency hopes to begin offering its first-ever competitive offshore wind leases near the end of the year.

Schedule: The hearing before the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee is Wednesday, March 7, at 1 p.m. in B-308 Rayburn.

Witnesses: Watson and Beaudreau.

Schedule: The hearing before the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee is Thursday, March 8, at 9:30 a.m. in 1324 Longworth.

Witnesses: Watson and Beaudreau.