(Image source from: Evening Standard)
The native Alaskan village of Kaktovik and part of the Arctic National Wildfire Refuge has hit by 6.4 magnitude earthquake.
No injuries or damage were reported after the tremblor, the most powerful on record in Alaska's oil-producing North Slope, hit just before 7 a.m. (local time) on Sunday, Paul Huang, a seismologist and deputy director of the National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, said.
No tsunami alert was brought forth, though the ground motion was felt as far away as Fairbanks, Alaska, over 600 kilometers to the south.
According to a statement from Alyeska, the consortium that runs the pipeline, the operations of the Trans Alaska Pipeline system went unaffected that carries North Slope crude 1,300 kilometers to the marine terminal at Valdez.
Alyeska said it would conduct follow-up inspections of the pipeline and related facilities.
Inspection teams likewise found nothing awry at the Prudhoe Bay oil field about 137km to the east, said Megan Baldino, a spokeswoman for BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc, which operates the field.
According to the United States Geological Survey, the quake, initially measured at a magnitude 6.5, was followed by a series of aftershocks, the largest of which was a 6.0 tremor.
The chief quake centered a coastal Inupiat village of more or less 260 residents, 64 kilometers southwest of Kaktovik at the northern edge of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
"I felt a little shaking and felt dizzy, and felt the shelves shaking," said Archie Brower, assistant manager at the Kaktovik Kikiktak grocery.
State emergency officials said they had no reports of damage, but locals in Kaktovik said the tremor did not pass unnoticed.
By Sowmya Sangam
