The slick from a deepwater well spurting crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico may reach the sensitive shoreline of Louisiana by Friday, officers said, as engineers struggled to stem the flow, according to dpa. Meanwhile, authorities raised the estimated rate of leakage from the damaged well to as much as 5,000 barrels a day, five times more than the 1,000 barrels a day previously feared spilling into the water around 70 kilometres off the coast of Louisiana. Oil company BP, which operates the well, experimented late Wednesday with a surface burn-off inside a small area contained with floating booms, which lasted about 45 minutes, the US Coast Guard's Matthew Schofield told the German Press Agency dpa. But engineers would not know until morning how effective it was and whether they could burn off the contamination across wider areas. BP spokesman Daren Beaudo confirmed to dpa that the authorities had raised their estimate of the leakage rate. A third leak in the pipe from the well on the sea floor was discovered late Wednesday, he said. The leaks are equivalent to nearly 800,000 litres of crude oil per day, a rough estimate issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The spreading crude oil could reach Louisiana's Mississippi River Delta by Friday, NOAA's Charlie Henry told reporters in an earlier telephone briefing. The current trajectory puts that shoreline on the "outer boundary" of the oil slick, he said. If the winds swing out of the south-east, as they have in recent days, "the very leading edge of of the plume will be near the Louisiana Mississippi Delta by Friday evening," Henry said. The information confirmed fears that the BP exploratory well in the Gulf of Mexico, torn open by a rig explosion last week, could create an environmental disaster on the shoreline along the Gulf of Mexico. Managers of shoreline wildlife refuges were preparing to herd birds away from the shoreline with fireworks and other noise devices. The technique was used successfully after a pipeline spill in 2004 in the Gulf during Hurricane Ivan, Henry said. BP has already deployed more than 33,000 metres of boom near the shoreline - from the Mississippi River Delta east to Alabama's Mobile Bay - to protect the shore from the worst of the oil, said BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles. "We are making every effort to keep it offshore," Suttles said, adding that BP would continue until it has "exhausted every opportunity." Seven whales have been seen swimming near the spill zone, according to three independent observations, Henry said. It was not clear if the whales were in distress, but they were being watched. The explosion on the surface rig tore open three separate leaks 1,500 metres below on the ocean floor and left 11 workers presumed dead. The Deepwater Horizons exploratory rig that drilled the 6- kilometre-deep well sank on April 22, two days after the accident. Wednesday's controlled burn is just "one tool in a tool kit ... to minimize the consequences of the spill," said US Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry, who is overseeing BP's containment efforts. The attempts to contain and clean up the oil were costing BP 6 million dollars per day. A film of oil had spread as far as 130 kilometres from the site and in some areas was up to 70 kilometres wide as poor weather hampered efforts by skimming ships to collect oil from the surface. With fairer weather on Wednesday, BP was able to airdrop huge amounts of chemicals onto the spill to disperse some of the oil, Suttles said. Other containment efforts include subsea oil collection, for which a containment chamber has been built. BP has brought a drill ship, Enterprise, to the site and was working to connect the chamber to the drill chip. This could take two to four weeks to complete, Suttles said. "It's becoming more complex as we have to design interventions that were not anticipated in the design of the (blow-out preventer)," said Suttles, referring to a valve that could plug the leaks. A separate effort will see BP start work on a relief well to divert the flow from the leaks, with drilling expected to begin on Friday, Suttles said.
