Oil rig explosion

NEW ORLEANS, April 29 (UPI) -- Crews set fire to large swaths of oil spewing from a Gulf of Mexico well, a spill officials said is putting 200,000 gallons of crude into the water each day.

The controlled burns Wednesday of oil floating on the Gulf is meant to keep the bulk of the slick from reaching the ecologically sensitive areas of southern Louisiana, but oil is predicted to reach shore sometime Friday.

U.S. Coast Guard Read Adm. Mary Landry said Wednesday that each day as much as 5,000 barrels -- 210,000 gallons -- of oil were escaping from the wellhead that had been worked on from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. That platform exploded in flames April 20 and sank two days later. Eleven rig workers are missing and presumed dead.

It had been estimated that about 1,000 barrels a day was coming from the well, which has been the focus of furious efforts to staunch the leak, but Landry's announcement that the spill was growing at a rate five times faster raised additional environmental concerns.

One emergency worker told the BBC the Deepwater Horizon event could make Alaska's the Exxon Valdez spill -- 11 million gallons -- "pale in comparison."

Crews prepared huge containment booms to try to protect the shore and they say there is no way of knowing yet where the oil will wash ashore. Oil from the Deepwater Horizon rig, which was working about 50 miles south of Louisiana, was within miles of the coast Wednesday.