Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Interior Department plans to issue additional rules on the safety of offshore drilling, Secretary Ken Salazar said.

The rules, to be proposed this year, will require blowout preventers deemed more reliable than units now used by the

industry, he told reporters in Washington today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Katarzyna Klimasinska in Washington at kklimasinska@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net