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Video captures oil spill gurgling through Arkansas street

A video of a pipeline rupture in the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, shows crude oil glugging through a residential street, flooding nearby yards.

Homes have been evacuated in the area where ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline burst on Friday, spilling crude from Alberta's oil sands into a few driveways and onto streets, according to CNN.

In a video taken by a resident, the camera follows a stream of oil flowing down the road as the narrator says it's running to a drain at the end of the street.

[ Related: Is thick crude oil from Canadian tar sands behind Arkansas pipeline rupture? ]

From afar, the dark liquid looks like it could be water, but as the camera turns toward a driveway it becomes clear the substance is thick oil, gurgling onto the pavement.

"The smell is unbelievable," the narrator says.

However, he says the oil hasn't affected his own house, which is on the other side of the street from where most of the oil has spilled.

ExxonMobil's update on cleanup efforts says this is categorized as a 'major spill,' meaning there are greater than 250 barrels of oil. The statement says the company is responding for a spill of 10,000 barrels but it has already recovered about 12,000 barrels of oil and water.

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Today, an image of a duck covered in oil, with the crude dripping from its beak, gave the spill a visual impact that will surely stick in the minds of environmentalists as proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline argue in favour of transporting even more Alberta oil to the United States.