Quotes from and on BP's--and America's--Gulf oil spill

--Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that the spill, which is ravaging beaches and wildlife, will not be contained until the leak is fully plugged and that even afterward "there will be oil out there for months to come." The disaster, which began with an oil rig explosion in mid-April, will persist "well into the fall," Allen said. A containment cap placed on the gusher near the sea floor trapped about 441,000 gallons of oil Saturday, BP spokesman Mark Proegler said, up from around 250,000 gallons of oil Friday. It's not clear how much is still escaping; an estimated 500,000 to 1 million gallons of crude is believed to be leaking daily. --BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward: "We're going to clean up the oil, we're going to remediate any environmental damage and we are going to return the Gulf coast to the position it was in prior to this event," he told the BBC. CG Adm Allen on "Fox News Sunday" that he doesn't "want to create any undue encouragement" and that "we need to underpromise and overdeliver." The oil is coating and miring waterfowl in the sticky mess, and dead birds and dolphins are washing ashore. Scientists say the wildlife death toll remains relatively modest, though, because the Deepwater Horizon rig was 50 miles off the coast and most of the oil has stayed in the open sea. The oil has steadily spread east, washing up in greater quantities in recent days. Small tar balls have washed up as far east as Fort Walton Beach, about a third of the way across the Florida Panhandle. Government officials estimate that roughly 23 million to 49 million gallons have leaked into the Gulf and say they are using a variety of strategies to curb its spread. "What we're doing right now is bringing all the skimming equipment in the United States that's not being used for anything else and bringing it to bear down there," Allen said on ABC's "This Week." At Pensacola Beach, Buck Langston and his family took to collecting globs of tar instead of sea shells on Sunday morning. They used improvised chopsticks to pick up the balls and drop them into plastic containers. Ultimately, the hoped to help clean it all up, Langston said. "Yesterday it wasn't like this, this heavy," Langston said. "I don't know why cleanup crews aren't out here." With no oil response workers on Louisiana's Queen Bess Island, Plaquemines Parish coastal zone management director P.J. Hahn decided he could wait no longer, pulling an exhausted brown pelican from the oil, slime dripping from its wings. "We're in the sixth week, you'd think there would be a flotilla of people out here," Hahn said. "As you can see, we're so far behind the curve in this thing." Link to original post: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100606/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_1063 For photos of the after effects of the spill: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_sc2694