Magnitude 6.4 earthquake hits Alaska’s North Slope

ANCHORAGE, Alaska: A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck on Sunday near the native Alaskan village of Kaktovik and part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge where the Trump administration plans to allow oil drilling, but no injuries or damage were reported.

The temblor, which occurred just before 7am (1500 GMT), was the most powerful on record to hit Alaska’s oil-producing North Slope, said Paul Huang, a seismologist and deputy director of the National Tsunami Warning Centre in Palmer, Alaska.

No tsunami alert was generated, though ground motion was felt as far away as Fairbanks, Alaska, nearly 644 km to the south.

The quake had no impact on operations of the Trans Alaska Pipeline system that carries North Slope crude 1,300 km to the marine terminal at Valdez, according to a statement from Alyeska, the consortium that runs the pipeline.

Alyeska said it would conduct follow-up inspections of the pipeline and related facilities. Inspection teams likewise found nothing amiss at the Prudhoe Bay oil field about 137 km to the east, said Megan Baldino, a spokeswoman for BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc, which operates the field.

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, according to the US Geological Survey.