With oil continuing to leak Wednesday from a runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico despite BP’s success in capturing some of the flow, a top Coast Guard official ordered the company to come up with a plan “to ensure that the remaining oil and gas flowing can be recovered.”

In a letter to Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, Rear Adm. James A. Watson, the on-scene coordinator of the unified command that is overseeing the response effort, gave the company three days to provide plans for “parallel, continuous and contingency collection processes.”

Among the requirements, Admiral Watson wrote, are that any new method to contain the leak be devised to reduce disruptions from hurricanes, when the full flow of oil would once again spew into the gulf.

The letter came amid continuing questions about how much of the leaking oil was being captured by BP’s latest containment effort, a cap that was lowered over the top of the well last week, and whether the company could be collecting more but had failed to provide enough surface equipment to handle it.