Bob Dudley, who doesn't officially take over until Oct. 1, met with residents and government officials in Biloxi, Miss., to discuss the company's long-term plans for dealing with the nation's worst-ever environmental disaster.
His comments came more than two weeks after the ruptured well was capped and with crude disappearing from the surface of the gulf.
"Where there is no oil on the beaches you probably don't need people walking up and down in hazmat suits. So you'll probably see that kind of a pullback," Dudley said, BBC News reported.
Still, Dudley emphasized that the oil giant will not walk away from the disaster, which spewed thousands of barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico and befouled beaches and waterways along the coast.
"We'll be here for years," Dudley said, according to CNN.
Dudley will be advised by James Lee Witt, who was director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency when Bill Clinton was president. He signed on to conduct an independent review of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last month and is now slated to advise Dudley on BP's disaster response.
Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's oil spill chief, is giving his own update today in Florida, after having met Thursday with coastal parish presidents in New Orleans and discussing long-term cleanup efforts once BP's blown-out oil well is finally plugged for good.
Allen described their meeting as a "very frank, productive conversation," according to CNN. He said that local officials "hold nothing back," and that they agreed that there should be no premature declaration of victory when it comes to cleanup.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who was also at the meeting with Allen, said local officials have the same attitude toward federal officials as they do toward BP -- that they're keen to get long-term promises of cleanup assistance.
"One of the things we absolutely wanted to get today was their commitment that they're in it for the long term," Jindal said, according to The Associated Press. "Look, all those [federal] people in the room, with no disrespect ... they're going to be rotated out to different jobs. Everybody here is still going to be here dealing with this oil, whether it's a year from now or years from now."
BP also announced today that it is setting up a $100 million charitable fund to help oil workers who have been hurt economically by the government's six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.
Earlier this week, BP announced it was claiming a $9.9 billion tax credit on costs related to the spill cleanup.
This weekend, BP is preparing two kill operations to plug the well and seal it with cement. First workers will attempt a "static kill," which involves pumping heavy drilling mud into a 150,000-pound containment cap atop the well. It's similar to a tactic that failed in May, when thousands of gallons of crude were still spewing out of the damaged well shaft. But now that the flow is greatly reduced, with only a few small leaks coming from the cap, engineers believe the tactic has a better chance.
Allen said the "static kill" is planned for Monday but could possibly begin before that, CNN reported.
Meanwhile, Dudley's predecessor, Tony Hayward, has given his first interview since agreeing to step down from the company's top job. He told The Wall Street Journal that he believes he was made out to be a "villain for doing the right thing."
"But I understand that people find it easier to vilify an individual more than a company," Hayward said. He said he resented U.S. officials' constant criticism of him and of BP but added that he "understood their frustration."
At one point early in the spill's spread, President Barack Obama said he would have fired Hayward if it had been up to him. The Journal article also noted that support for Hayward appears to be more robust in Britain, where he received a standing ovation at BP headquarters this week, and where a reporter recounted seeing a stranger send Hayward two glasses of brandy at a London club.
