Two Interior Department officials involved in the development of a safety report following the BP PLC oil spill have agreed to testify at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing next week, the panel said today.

Neal Kemkar, special assistant to the counselor to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and Mary Katherine Ishee, currently senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to the assistant secretary for land and minerals management, confirmed in writing that they will attend next Thursday's hearing, the committee said.

The two have agreed to discuss a May 2010 agency report that erroneously suggested a panel of independent engineers had endorsed the agency's six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, when in fact they had not. The agency quickly corrected the error and apologized to the engineers.

Committee Republicans for nearly a year and a half have sought documents and on-the-record interviews with agency officials to determine who within the administration may be responsible for the report's editing and whether the scientists were intentionally used as political cover.

Next week's hearing will come a month and a half after committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) canceled a July 25 hearing after Interior allegedly would not confirm the attendance of five invited agency witnesses. Those included Kemkar and Ishee as well as Steve Black, counselor to Salazar; Walter Cruickshank, deputy director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management; and Kallie Hanley, senior adviser at the Office of the Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs (E&ENews PM, July 24).

Salazar, who had offered to testify at the hearing, has committed to having the five officials testify at a future hearing, according to an Aug. 23 letter from Christopher Mansour, Interior's legislative affairs chief.

An inspector general probe in late 2010 concluded that errors in the agency's report were likely the result of late-night White House edits, but it found no conclusive evidence of an intent to mislead the public.

According to the committee, the lead investigators in the probe interviewed Kemkar, who helped develop the drilling moratorium report, communicated with peer reviewers and transmitted edits with White House staff. But the inspector general did not seek documents directly from Kemkar, committee Republicans said.

Inspectors also never interviewed Ishee, who at the time was serving as deputy administrator for the now-defunct Minerals Management Service, according to the committee.

Interior has said that it remains willing to comply with the committee's "legitimate oversight interests" but that a congressional hearing on the matter is unnecessary.

Committee Democrats have panned the investigation as a political smear tactic in the heat of an election year. They have criticized Republicans for failing to pass legislation that would strengthen offshore drilling safety or call the CEOs of the companies responsible for the spill to testify.