Adm. Bob Papp listens during a briefing in New Orleans

The government agency leading the effort to clean up the nation’s largest oil spill is preparing for two impending challenges to their mission along the Gulf Coast: hurricanes and budget cuts.

Over two days, the newly-minted chief of the U.S. Coast Guard got an update on the efforts with a two-hour fly-over of the affected areas and a briefing at what some describe as the “brain” of the oil spill response.

“We’re making a dent in it,” Adm. Bob Papp said on Wednesday as he and a Fox News crew flew in a helicopter over the BP oil rig that’s gushing up to 60,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico. “I see some improvement. The surface definitely has improved, but we’re not out of the woods yet.”

The day before, during his third trip to the region, Papp was briefed by representatives from BP, the military and other federal agencies about the coming hurricane season and plans to keep the clean-up effort intact even during strong storms.

“We’ve got a lot of very expensive, valuable equipment out there taking care of this challenge,” Papp said from inside the Unified Area Command center in New Orleans, La, where hundreds of what he called “dedicated patriots” from across the country process and analyze the information coming in from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. “If we have a hurricane come through — while we may have enough equipment out there right now to deal with what we’re facing — what’s going to happen if some of that equipment is destroyed, damaged, or pushed off station?”

Even though Papp only took the reins of the Coast Guard in late May, when Adm. Thad Allen retired as commandant but stayed on as “Incident Commander,” Papp said has had extensive experience with hurricanes from his time as Commander of the Coast Guard Atlantic Area, during which more than 30 named storms and hurricanes hit his region.

“So I know the devastation that [such storms] can bring on,” he said. “What we’ve done now is we’ve identified the additional resources we’re going to need in order to come in here in a worst case scenario, having a hurricane on top of this. … I’m feeling very confident now that we’re going to be prepared to take on these extra challenges.”

In particular, the Coast Guard has ordered about 20 more large, off-shore skimming boats, the types of vessels have been “collecting the bulk of the oil out there,” according to Papp. In addition, the Coast Guard is putting pressure on boom manufacturers to “get more boom down here” for the hurricane season, Papp said.

“When a storm comes through, all that boom that’s out there could be in Arkansas by the time a hurricane [hits],” he said.

Much of the extra resources, including the off-shore skimming boats, are expected to arrive in the Gulf Coast within two weeks, according to Papp, who described his job as “just commandant of the Coast Guard,” providing “resources into this operation to make sure that we’ve got Coast Guard people, ships, aircraft and other resources down here to help Admiral Allen carry out [his] job” as incident commander.

Asked about suggestions that hurricanes could actually benefit the clean-up effort, Papp dismissed the notion.

“Nobody wins in an oil spill, nobody wins in a hurricane,” he said. “While [a hurricane] might disperse oil, I don’t think anybody wants a hurricane to hit this region if we don’t have to. … I’d rather just be attacking oil and not have to worry about hurricanes.”

While the Coast Guard is struggling with oil, it’s also struggling to keep its other missions fulfilled.

“We don’t have a lot of bench strength, and all the resources that we’ve brought down here are coming out of other coast guard missions,” Papp said of his agency, which has only 42,000 uniformed personnel and 11 formal missions, including search-and-rescue operations and law enforcement. “We have finite resources, so when I bring a couple dozen aircraft down here from other locations, a dozen or more ships from other locations, some of those other missions are going to get short-changed a little bit.”

Complicating things even further, the Coast Guard is facing a significant budget cut in the next year. The Obama administration’s 2011 budget proposal for the Coast Guard is just over $10 billion, down more than $75 million from the year before, according to Coast Guard numbers. The Coast Guard needed about a $100 million increase just to keep operations constant from the year before, and that estimate was reached before the oil spill ever happened, according to one source familiar with the Coast Guard budget.

Asked whether the White House might propose more money for the Coast Guard after its efforts in the Gulf Coast, Papp said he couldn’t answer.

“I can’t presume what the administration or the Congress might do,” he said. “All I know is: I know how much money I get, and we’ll put it to the best use for the taxpayer. … If we have something else come up, whether it is an East Coast hurricane, migrants coming to the country [illegally via sea] or a fishery situation in the gulf of Alaska, we’ll reassess and assign resources as we need to.”

For now, Papp suggested, the trade-off is worthwhile, with skimming, burning and other efforts “making a difference” and creating “smaller footprints” of oil.

“This is very, very important to our country,” he told the crew of a Coast Guard vessel in Pensacola, Fla, on Wednesday, just before they left to help clean-up oil. “This is very, very important to the people of this region.”

But, a day before, Papp told Fox News that clean-up efforts can only do so much.

“It’s a mistake to think that the oil is not going to reach the beaches,” he said. “We would not be truthful if we said we’re going to keep all the oil off the beaches. Inevitably, there will be some oil on the beaches. So what we have to do is collect as much of that oil out as far as we can.”

Briefing at Unified Area Command Center in New Orleans, La.

Unidentified briefer tells Adm. Papp of coming resources

Unified Area Command center in New Orleans, La.

Adm. Papp talks with Coast Guard crew in Pensacola, Fla, before they leave for Gulf