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Lamar McKay, chairman and president of BP America, Inc., testifies at a Senate committee hearing Monday on Capitol Hill.Alex Brandon/The Associated Press

Efforts to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico are beginning to take hold, and the company will attempt an operation that could completely block the leak as soon as this week, a more optimistic BP PLC said Monday.

U.S. President Barack Obama, meanwhile, set up a presidential commission to investigate the cause of the rig explosion that sent oil gushing into the Gulf, and a key regulatory official overseeing offshore energy resigned.

More than three weeks after oil began surging into Gulf waters, the company said the use of a riser insertion tube tool has finally succeeded in keeping some of the crude from polluting the waters.

It is a glimmer of hope in a massive cleanup effort that has so far cost $500-million (U.S.) and has stirred fears of an ecological disaster in the economically important waters of the U.S. south.

Calm seas have aided cleanup efforts, oil has so far been kept from entering ocean currents that could carry it into Atlantic waters and the quantity of oil floating on the water has begun to diminish, officials said Monday.

Little crude has reached the surface, although a huge stream does continue to flood into the Gulf from a leaking well 1,500 metres below surface, Some scientists have raised concern that the use of sub-surface chemical dispersants has created underwater oil plumes of small oil droplets that, while invisible from above, have created regions that could prove fatal to sea life.

The spill has cast negative light on the U.S. Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore drilling but has been criticized for its "cozy" relations with industry. White House officials have pledged to split apart the service's revenue and regulatory functions and Mr. Obama ordered a "top-to-bottom reform" of the regulatory system. Chris Oynes, the associate director for offshore energy and minerals management at the service, tendered his resignation, news reports said Monday.

The presidential panel set up by Mr. Obama will be similar to ones that examined the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident, a White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity since the decision had not been formally announced.

Among the nearly 19,000 people working to clean up the spill, optimism was stoked by the success of the riser insertion tube tool, which has used a ship to slide a smaller recovery pipe into the larger, leaking pipe that is still connected to the out-of-control well. The smaller pipe has succeeded in sucking away just over 1,000 barrels a day from a leak officials have estimated at 5,000 a day.

If it continues to work as expected, it could eventually bring 2,000 barrels a day to surface, where it is being stored in a drillship with a 125,000-barrel capacity, said Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production, who has declined to debate experts who say much more oil is actually spilling into the Gulf.

The company also hopes to attempt what is known as a "top kill" later this week or this weekend. That method would see the company inject heavy drilling fluids into the leaking well at high pressure, in hopes that a sufficient volume of those drilling fluids will jam up the top of the well and prevent oil from surging up.

"If that's successful, we would be bringing this incident to a close," Mr. Suttles said. He later clarified his remarks to mean that if the top kill works, the oil spill will effectively be halted.

The company is currently drilling one relief well, a second well that will allow the company to permanently stop the leaking well, and has now received permission to drill another relief well.

The leaking well will never be used again, said Mr. Suttles, although he did not say whether the company plans to also abandon the oil reservoir the Macondo well was intended to tap.

"There is absolutely no intent to ever, ever produce this well," he said. "We intend to fill up the bottom of this well with cement."

With files from AP

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