Environment

Scientists and conspiracy theorists alike were left mystified after NASA cameras picked up a mysterious blue spherical object zooming past the Sun on November 17th Taken from NASA’s STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) satellites which orbits the Sun, the images show the large sphere in clear view, before going missing from other frames. In response to much online speculation about the blue sphere, NASA said while there is a coronal hole on the surface of the sun at the moment, it was not captured in the images.

Following yesterdays 7.3 earthquake off the coast of Fukushima an aftershock measuring up to 5.7 on the Richter scale has struck the area. There have been conflicting reports as to the magnitude of today’s aftershock, but no reports of any damage so far. According to RT Japan’s Meteorological Agency stated that it was 5.7 with its epicenter located off the coast of the Fukushima Prefecture at a depth of 30km. The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC), however, recorded the shock at 5.2, with a depth of 10km.

A tsunami alert has been issued after powerful 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck the Fukushima Prefecture in Japan The quake struck 67km northeast of the city of Iwaki located in the southern part of the Hamadori coastal region of Fukushima Prefecture. It struck on Tuesday morning at about 06:00 local time (21:00 GMT, Monday), the Japan Meteorological Agency said. A ten foot tsunami wave alert has been issued and residents living near the Fukushima coastline are being told to evacuate the area.

A powerful earthquake, with a preliminary magnitude of M7.3 on the Richter scale, since reduced to M6.9  by the USGS, struck Japan 156 miles northeast of Tokyo at 5:59am local time.

The epicenter of the earthquake, which was felt in Tokyo, was off the coast of Fukushima prefecture at a depth of about 10 km, Japan's Meteorological Agency said, the same Fukushima that was site of the 2011 natural disaster and tsunami that resulted in the worst nuclear power plant disaster since Chernobyl.

Submitted by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

As much as up to 50 percent of the production of oil majors could be hit by carbon costs in the next ten years if legislators that currently price carbon extend the policy to the upstream sector, Wood Mackenzie said in a new report on how oil majors would respond to the global energy transition and rising pressure for low-carbon energy.