Feds may set Gulf oil slick ablaze 
 
 A satellite shot, taken Monday, of the oil slick off the coast of Louisiana. 
 
 
 
 
 
 NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Coast Guard officials are considering setting the Gulf of Mexico oil slick on fire as it moved Tuesday to within 20 miles of sensitive ecological areas in the Mississippi River Delta. 
 
 Officials say it could become one of worst spills in U.S. history. 
 
 Oil is still leaking at a rate of about 42,000 gallons a day from the well, located some 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana beneath a drill rig that exploded and sank last week. Eleven workers are still missing following the incident, and are presumed dead. 
 
 BP, the well's owner, is racing to shut off the well using eight remote controlled submarines, but has had no luck as of yet. 
 
 "If we don't secure the well, this could be one of the most serious oil spills in U.S. history," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry, head of a joint response task force, said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. 
 
 Twenty miles is the closest the slick has come to land so far. 
 
 Officials said oil slicks are sometimes set on fire, especially when they are near sensitive marsh areas where heavy equipment used to clean the oil may cause more harm than good. 
 
 If the slick is set on fire, it would be a controlled burn using fire-proof booms, and only done during the day, said Landry. It could begin as early as Wednesday. 
 
 The spill, measured from end to end, stretched as wide as 42 miles by 80 miles, although oil isn't necessarily covering that entire area. 
 
 Most of the slick is a thin sheen on the water's surface, ranging in thickness from a couple of molecules to the equivalent of a layer of paint. About 3% of it is a heavy, pudding-like crude oil. 
 
 At its current flow rate would take over 260 days to rival the Exxon Valdez disaster, which discharged some 11 million gallons into Alaska's Price William Sound. Still, even if it never compares to the Exxon Valdes spill's size, if it makes landfall it'll have serious ecological repercussions. 
 
 The Coast Guard, BP, and the rig's owner Transocean (RIG), have deployed nearly 50 vessels to help contain and clean the slick. 
 
 Marine life has been spotted in the area. Over the weekend a plane from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sighted five small whales nearby. Crews working to contain the spill were alerted to their presence. 
 
 Efforts are also underway near the shoreline to deal with the spill should it reach land, including positioning boom material around sensitive ecological areas. 
 
 Five staging areas have been set up on land, stretching from Venice, La. to Pensacola, Fla. 
 
 Landry said it appears the slick should remain at sea for at least the next three days, although weather reports for the latter part of that period suggest the wind could shift and blow the slick toward land. 
 
 The oil, if it stays at sea, will eventually evaporate, breakdown and sink, or get cleaned up. 
 
 But analysts have said the spill could have political fallout, especially if it reaches shore. 
 
 Several lawmakers and interest groups have led a charge over the last several years to open up more parts of the U.S. coast for oil drilling, efforts that are generally supported by the public. 
 
 That support could erode if crude oil starts washing up on the Louisiana or Mississippi coasts. 
 
 The well is expected to continue leaking until it is sealed. The leak appears to be coming from a pipe that ran from the well head to the drilling rig, which is now laying upside down in 5,000 feet of water not far from the well head. 
 
 It has not been decided if the rig will be salvaged or remain where it is, a Transocean official said Monday. 
 
 To seal the leak, three approaches are being tried. 
 
 BP is now using a set of remote controlled submarines in an attempt to activate the well's "blow out preventer" -- a steel device the size of a small house that sits atop the well and is intended to choke off the flow of oil in the event of a disaster. 
 
 It's not clear why that device didn't not originally act to cap the well, or if it will be of any use going forward. 
 
 BP (BP) is also bringing in another drilling rig which could seal the well, but that effort will take months, according to a BP spokesman. 
 
 In the meantime, the company is also trying a novel approach to capture the oil -- using a dome right above the well head. The dome resembles an inverted funnel, with a pipe leading up to ships waiting at the surface to capture the oil. That tactic has never been tried in water this deep. 
 
 A BP spokesman said the dome should be ready in two to four weeks. 
 
 The blast last week, which is still under investigation, resulted in 11 workers going missing. The search for them was suspended last Friday. 
 
 115 other people made it off the rig after it exploded, most of them safely. One person remains in the hospital. ||||| With a vast oil slick now within only 20 miles of the ecologically fragile Louisiana coastline, Coast Guard officials said they were considering a “controlled burn” of the petroleum on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry, the federal on-scene coordinator for the spill, said such a burn might be conducted as soon as Wednesday. 
 
 A joint government and industry task force has been unable to stop crude oil from streaming out of a broken pipe attached to a well 5,000 feet below sea level. The leaks were found Saturday, days after an oil rig to which the pipe was attached exploded and sank in the gulf about 50 miles southeast of Venice, La. An estimated 42,000 gallons a day are now spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 Officials said Tuesday that wind projections indicated that the oil would not reach land in the next three days, and it was unclear exactly where along the Gulf Coast it might arrive first. 
 
 “If some of the weather conditions continue, the Delta area is at risk,” said Charlie Henry, scientific support coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 
 
 Admiral Landry said a final decision had not been made yet about whether to burn the oil. 
 
 “We fully understand there are benefits and trade-offs,” she said. 
 
 But she also noted that with the spill moving toward land the impact on the shoreline had to be considered. That part of Louisiana contains some 40 percent of the lower 48 states’ wetlands and is spawning grounds for countless fish and birds. 
 
 Controlled burns have been done and tested before, Admiral Landry said, and had been shown to be “effective in burning 50 to 95 percent of oil collected in a fire boom.” The downside, she said, was a “black plume” of smoke that would put soot and other particulates into the air. 
 
 The consideration of burning was raised as the spill seemed to enter a direr phase. Short-term fixes have been unsuccessful, and political reaction has intensified. 
 
 On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said they were expanding the government’s investigation of the explosion that caused the oil rig disaster. The inquiry will have subpoena power and will look into possible criminal or civil violations by the operators of the drilling rig, Transocean, a Swiss company, and related companies. 
 
 Administration officials also met Tuesday with top executives of BP, which was leasing the rig and is required by law to pay for the cleanup. Last fall, as the federal government was weighing tougher safety and environmental rules for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, BP objected, saying its voluntary programs were successful. 
 
 BP engineers have not been able to activate a device known as a blowout preventer, a valve at the wellhead that was supposed to stop oil flow in an emergency and is the only short-term solution for capping the well. 
 
 Doug Suttles, the chief operating officer for exploration and production at BP, defended the company’s efforts, and said the cleanup was costing $6 million a day. He said engineers had not given up on engaging the valve and were exploring other possible fixes. 
 
 Mr. Suttles said that a plan to use a type of tent or dome to collect the oil was progressing and was two to four weeks from being operational. On Tuesday, the company received permits to drill a relief well, which would be started half a mile from the current well site. Crews plan to drill toward the current well and then inject it with heavy fluids and concrete to seal it. That solution is experimental at this depth, however, and is months away. 
 
 Coast Guard officials said they were not expecting landfall for the spill in the next three days. But Doug Helton, the incident operations coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s emergency response division, said winds would change Wednesday and start pushing the spill north and west toward the Mississippi Delta. “It is going to land eventually,” Mr. Helton said. 
 
 The prospect alarmed fisherman and ecologists along the Louisiana coast. Gov. Bobby Jindal requested that the Coast Guard set up protective booms around several wildlife refuges in the Delta. 
 
 Those delicate coastal rookeries and estuaries factor into the consideration for the surface burn. Such a burn would most likely ease the impact on wildlife. 
 
 The oceanic agency issued a guide to the burn that advised as follows: 
 
 “Based on our limited experience, birds and mammals are more capable of handling the risk of a local fire and temporary smoke plume than of handling the risk posed by a spreading oil slick. Birds flying in the plume can become disoriented, and could suffer toxic effects. This risk, however, is minimal when compared to oil coating and ingestion.” 
 
 Admiral Landry said that a burn would take place offshore where no one on land could see it. 
 
 A burn does not get rid of the oil entirely. It leaves waxy residue that can either be skimmed from the surface or sink to the bottom of the ocean. 
 
 John M. Broder contributed reporting from Washington.
– The Coast Guard is considering setting the gigantic oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico ablaze as it approaches land. A controlled burn to burn off the oil could happen as soon as today if winds keep pushing the Rhode Island-sized slick toward ecologically sensitive areas of the Mississippi Delta, CNN reports. "We fully understand that there are benefits and trade-offs" in torching the slick, the admiral co-ordinating federal operations told the New York Times. Birds and mammals will be "more than capable" of handling the effects of a burn, which will remove most of the oil and leave a waxy residue, said a Coast Guard spokesman.