The toll to the region has been crushing as millions of barrels of oil spewed from a mile below the surface.Video

100 days later, devastation and hope as oil spill efforts take hold

By the CNN Wire Staff

July 28, 2010 -- Updated 0911 GMT (1711 HKT)

(CNN) -- An oil well ruptured in the Gulf of Mexico 100 days ago, setting into motion the worst environment disaster in U.S. history.

The toll to the region has been crushing as millions of barrels of oil spewed from a mile below the surface.
On Wednesday, 100 days on, thousands of workers have lost their jobs, sensitive wetlands have been damaged and tourism is at a near standstill.
But efforts to contain the underwater gusher appear to be taking hold.
Coast Guard Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft, the federal on-scene commander for cleanup, said a fleet of 800 skimmers collected only one barrel of oil Monday. A containment cap put in place nearly two weeks ago appears to be up to the task.
At the height of the spill, they were collecting 25,000 barrels of oil a day.
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"The task that's laid out before us is very clear right now," said retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the man in charge of the federal Gulf of Mexico oil crisis response said Tuesday.
"We have absolute priorities on killing the well, maintaining the recovery, making sure the oil is all removed and making sure the beaches are cleaned up and that the commitment by BP to the people is met," he said.
Crews are back on track to permanently shut down BP's once-gushing wellhead in the next few weeks, if setbacks are avoided and weather permits.

Allen, speaking in a teleconference, reiterated that he expects the first step to begin Monday. The process, called a "static kill," involves pouring mud and cement into the well from above.
As soon as five days afterward, once the cement dries around a casing, said Allen, the "static kill" would be followed by a "bottom kill," sealing the sunken well permanently from the bottom through an intersecting relief well.

But Allen noted that despite the progress, the situation is still serious in the region.

"When you put somewhere between 3 million and 5.2 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, I don't think anybody can understate the impact and the gravity of that situation," he said.
Still, Zukunft said, the spilled oil is "in its final life cycle."

At the well site, crews working on the ruptured, but capped, oil well have once again connected through the relief well to existing underwater equipment, BP said Tuesday.

The workers had been forced to disconnect their equipment and retreat from the well site late last week, when Tropical Storm Bonnie loomed as a potential threat. But when Bonnie lost power, workers returned to the site over the weekend.
BP said it planned to test the blowout preventer on the well later Tuesday, and then run casing pipe later this week as a prelude to the final shutdown.

Allen outlined the timetable as rigs drilling the relief wells and other ships returned to the scene amid calmer waters. Evacuations ahead of Tropical Storm Bonnie delayed efforts to seal the well for about a week.
All indications are that the well is structurally sound 13 days after valves on the new containment cap were closed, stopping oil from spewing into the Gulf after three months of relentless flow.

BP crews managed to temporarily cap the undersea well at the heart of the disaster on July 15.

Oil had gushed from the ruptured well for nearly three months after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, leaving 11 workers dead. Officials have said the relief well is the only permanent solution to the disaster.

The latest readings showed the cap is holding, and there don't appear to be any leaks from the well -- conditions that are essential before it can be sealed from the top and bottom through the two methods.
The American set to take over BP said Tuesday that in the aftermath of the oil spill, he's "sure there will be changes" in the oil industry.

"There's no question we're going to learn a lot from this accident in the Gulf Coast. It's going to be about equipment, people, different companies, and as a result of that, we're going to learn a lot, both BP and the industry," Robert Dudley told reporters outside BP headquarters in London, England, as he emerged alongside BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg and outgoing Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward.

The oil giant said Tuesday that Dudley will replace Hayward as chief executive officer on October 1.

Dudley is a long-time BP employee with more than 30 years in the oil business. A chemical engineer by training, he was put in charge of the day-to-day leadership of the Gulf spill cleanup operation in June.

"I've spent the last three months, every day, on the Gulf Coast," he said. "And I'm going to focus for the next month and a half on what we're doing in the Gulf Coast, our relationships in the Gulf Coast and in Washington."

Some relationships in Washington are quite strained. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Florida, who represents the Tampa area, told a House subcommittee assessing the impact of the oil spill on Gulf coast tourism that "the efforts of BP to date have been inadequate, to say the least."

"What is particularly maddening is, we watch these incessant ads -- full-page ads -- by BP that are polishing their corporate image at a time where they should be devoting a good portion of these monies to helping small business owners, our hotels, get back on their feet," she said Tuesday.

CNN's Ed Payne, Aaron Cooper, Lesa Jansen, Allan Chernoff, Vivian Kuo, David Mattingly, Rich Phillips and Matt Smith contributed to this report.