An overflight of the area in which an AFP journalist participated showed the unusual pattern, confirming comments about the oil from US Coast Guard officials.

"These overflights give responders a good aerial picture of the situation, give us where the oil is, where it may be heading, and they also allow us to do better planning on the way we organize resources," said Coast Guard spokesman Nyx Cangemi.

The orange-looking oil bands appeared to be several meters (yards) wide instead of one single patch of oil.

The irregular patterns could complicate the work of some 13,000 people deployed in the region to contain the oil threatening the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Earlier, officials said the oil slick was shifting its pattern and breaking up into smaller patches.

"We've had reports of tar balls which can be manually picked up, but at this point the majority of the oil is far offshore," said Admiral Thad Allen, from the US Coast Guard.

"I believe this spill is changing in its character. I don't believe any longer we have a large model spill," he told a press conference on Dauphin Island, Alabama.

Instead he explained "when the oil comes up, it's separating the different patches of oil of where you have open water between.

"There's good and bad news with that. It's widely dispersed and it's hard to manage, but on the other hand, it's coming ashore in smaller quantities of what is a larger spill."

More than three weeks after an explosion sank a BP-leased drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, the slick has yet to hit the threatened states of Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama even though oil is gushing into the sea.

Coast Guard officials working with crews from BP and other oil companies have been working to contain the spill and protect the shorelines, particularly Louisiana's fragile wetlands, home to a host of endangered species.

Some experts have said the spill may actually be at least 10 times worse than the US Coast Guard's official estimate that 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) of crude are gushing from the ruptured well each day.

The Deepwater Horizon rig, leased by BP and owned by Transocean, was hit by an April 20 explosion that later sank the platform, killing 11 workers.

Efforts by British energy giant BP to contain and ultimately stop the leak have so far failed, as they struggled Friday to insert either a tube into the fractured pipe to carry away the oil or place a containment box over the top.

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