Oil company BP said it had so far spent $2.35 billion on the response effort to its Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The London-based company said the sum included $126 million paid out in claims to those affected by the disaster.
Progress on the relief well, intended to kill the leaking well, and measures to improve the capture of oil from the leaking well, were on track, BP said.
The company set up a $20 billion fund under pressure from the White House as public anger runs high over the undersea leak that began at a BP deepwater well in April and continues to spew oil into the Gulf, damaging tourism, fisheries and fragile ecosystems.
Lawyers involved in litigation over the disaster said the fund should be used only to compensate victims, and said they were shocked that the fund was also for other purposes that could include massive clean-up costs and litigation.
The money can be used for a variety of purposes but compensation is central, said Michael Rozen, a partner in the Feinberg Rozen law firm charged with administering the fund.
Kenneth Feinberg, the firm's founder, was named by the White House to oversee the process. To focus on the spill fund, Mr Feinberg will step down from his role as the US Treasury's "pay czar" this summer.
The White House and Mr Feinberg have said the $20 billion does not necessarily represent the ceiling of what BP could be asked to pay.
"My present understanding is ... that it is available for all manner of costs," Mr Rozen said, stressing that all legitimate claimants would be paid.
"Twenty billion maybe isn't sufficient for the mass of stuff that's aired, in which case BP will have to add more. If that should be the case, people still have their rights and remedies under law."
The British energy giant faces the costs of compensation, spill clean-up, lawsuits and setting up the fund after a verbal agreement that is now being put in writing, Mr Rozen said.
Meanwhile, the US government is reviewing BP's Alaska drilling plans after a report that the company's project did not receive proper environmental oversight.
"We are looking into the issue right now," US interior secretary Ken Salazar told a Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee hearing when asked about the reports about BP's Liberty project, located on a man-made island in the Beaufort Sea about 15 miles east of Prudhoe Bay.
Meanwhile, residents and business owners along the gulf face a weekend of watching and planning as a weather system that may become the year's first tropical storm, or hurricane, lingers on their doorstep.
A low-pressure system between the coast of Honduras and Grand Cayman island has a 70 per cent chance of becoming Alex, the first storm of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, according to the National Hurricane Centre in Miami.
A storm in the Gulf of Mexico may become a threat to cleanup efforts for the worst oil spill in US history, as well as to the offshore rigs that produce 30 per cent of the country's oil and 10 per cent of its natural gas.
"We will have our first real threat to operations and I am still worried about the oil slick," Jim Rouiller, a senior energy meteorologist at Planalytics Inc. "We cannot rule out impact on this spill from Alex."
Reuters, Bloomberg