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(Updates with additional details and comments from U.S. government officials.) By Mark Long and Angel Gonzalez Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES A drill rig working on a relief well and several other vessels are returning to the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as a tropical storm that prompted evacuation petered out over the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, the federal government's top recovery coordinator said Saturday. The Development Driller 3, which is drilling the first of two relief wells designed to kill the leak, should be back at the site within 24-36 hours and then hooked back up to its subsea equipment eight to 12 hours after that, Ret. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said during a teleconference. Once everything is back in place, work will resume on the laying of casing in the well bore, which will be cemented. "Once the casing is in place and the cement is drying, we intend to move ahead with the static kill," Allen said, referring to an operation to plug up the well with drilling mud. "The static kill could go very quickly," he said, roughly estimating that engineers might be ready to start that operation three to five days from now. Before the evacuation was decreed late Thursday, the rig was completing the casing of the relief well, in preparation for it to intersect with the well that has spewed millions of barrels of crude in the Gulf. The intersection was scheduled for the end of July before the evacuation happened. Allen said it would take seven to 10 days after the Development Driller 3 is hooked back up for the broken well to be intercepted. He said two vessels were able to remain at the scene of the spill to monitor the cap that was left in place that's kept oil from gushing into the Gulf for more than a week "We continue to have integrity at the wellhead; pressure continues to slowly rise," he said. "Our confidence is increasing that we may have greater integrity in the well than we guessed." The National Hurricane Center discontinued tropical storm warnings on Saturday morning, as Tropical Depression Bonnie weakened as it moved across the Gulf. Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said no increase in strength was expected as it reaches the coast Saturday evening. "We do not expect any significant storm surge along the coast," Lubchenco said, adding the storm, which will pass right over the spill site, will help dissipate and break up the oil on the surface. While waves from the storm could push oil deeper into marshes, they may also flush tarballs off some fouled beaches. -By Mark Long and Angel Gonzalez, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2145; mark.long@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires July 24, 2010 13:36 ET (17:36 GMT)