Crews set to burn oil leaking in Gulf

THE US Coast Guard said it was to start a “controlled burn” yesterday to battle a giant oil slick from last week’s deadly offshore drilling rig explosion, as the spill threatened wide-scale coastal damage to four US Gulf Coast states.

Response boats worked to clean up oil where the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank. The leaking well, 5,000 feet under the ocean surface off Louisiana’s coast, has created an oil sheen and emulsified crude slick with a circumference of about 600 miles, covering about 74,000sq km, the Coast Guard said.

Swiss-based Transocean Ltd’s Deepwater Horizon rig sank on April 22, two days after it exploded and caught fire while finishing a well for BP Plc about 40 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River. Eleven rig workers are missing and presumed dead in what is the worst oil rig disaster in almost a decade.