Salazar to review blowout containment ahead of Capitol Hill grilling

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is heading to the Gulf Coast to review oil industry efforts to ensure fast containment of deepwater well blowouts — a capacity that Interior is making a prerequisite to granting drilling permits.

Salazar told reporters Thursday that he’s heading to Houston to “examine the latest on the ceiling caps prepared by the two different companies on oil spill containment.”

Salazar spoke briefly to reporters after remarks on conservation at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. Interior declined comment on the trip.

But Salazar is likely referring to enhanced blowout containment systems developed by the Exxon-led Marine Well Containment Company, which is a consortium of major oil companies, and a separate system developed by the Helix Energy Solutions Group.

The trip comes ahead of Salazar’s appearance before House and Senate committees next week to defend the Interior’s fiscal 2012 budget request.

He’s likely to face a grilling from Republicans and pro-drilling Democrats who are furious that his department has not yet resumed deepwater permitting, which was halted after the BP oil spill began.

Interior is requiring oil companies to show compliance with beefed-up safety standards and demonstrate that they can quickly contain runaway wells, like BP’s ill-fated Macondo well that ultimately dumped more than 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico last year.