Coast Guard: No plans to push BP out of oil cleanup

[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/05/24/art.thad.allen.getty.jpg caption="US Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen speaks in the White House briefing room on May 24."]

(CNN) - BP will not be replaced by the federal government in the ongoing cleanup efforts of the Gulf oil spill, said Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen, the Obama administration's point man for the spill.

"To push BP out of the way would raise the question: to replace them with what?" he said at the White House. BP is "exhausting every technical means possible" to deal with the spill, he said on Monday.

A BP executive on Monday defended his company's attempts to stop the leak amid growing frustration and suggestions that the federal government should take over the effort.

"We won't quit until we get this job done," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles told CNN's "American Morning." "We're doing everything we can."

The company's next effort to plug the leak is to be tried at dawn Wednesday, spokesman John Curry said. BP plans to use a "top kill" procedure - the pumping of thick, viscous fluid twice the density of water into the site of the leak to stop the flow so the well can then be sealed with cement.

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