NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana – Emergency teams are scheduled to begin a controlled burn of a giant oil slick off the US coast in the Gulf of Mexico at 1600 GMT, officials said Wednesday.

“Workboats will consolidate oil into a fire resistant boom approximately 500 feet (150 meters) long,” said a statement from a joint disaster response center set up by British energy giant BP and the US Coast Guard.

“This oil will then be towed to a more remote area, where it will be ignited and burned in a controlled manner. The plan calls for small, controlled burns of several thousand gallons of oil lasting approximately one hour each.”

The drastic move to set the sea on fire is seen as necessary after a giant slick growing by 42,000 gallons a day moved within 23 miles of Louisiana’s wetlands — an important sanctuary for waterfowl and other wildlife.

Efforts by BP, which leased the Deepwater Horizon platform that sank into the ocean last week, failed Tuesday to cap two leaks in a riser pipe that had connected the rig to the wellhead, despite the operation of four robotic submarines some 1,500 meters (5,000 feet) down on the seabed.

The rig, which BP leases from Houston-based contractor Transocean, went down last Thursday 130 miles southeast of New Orleans, still burning off crude two days after a blast that killed 11 workers.

“Part of a coordinated response combining tactics deployed above water, below water, dozens of miles offshore, as well as closer to coastal areas, today’s controlled burn will remove oil from the open water in an effort to protect shoreline and marine and other wildlife,” the statement said.

“No populated areas are expected to be affected by the controlled burn operations and there are no anticipated impacts to marine mammals and sea turtles,” it said.

“In order to ensure safety, the Environmental Protection Agency will continuously monitor air quality and burning will be halted if safety standards cannot be maintained.”

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