Whats that black spherical icon thing in the upper right corner, under buy/sell, with the progress bar?

Forgive me if there is another thread on this, but I searched and could not find one. There is no tool tip that explains this, nor any in-game help, nor is it explained in the manual. Sometime during the early stages of my game this box poped up below the metal/crystal buy/sell buttons. It has a black sphere in the Icon. A progress bar begins, starting green and getting redder as it fills the box. There is a button in the box to the right of the Icon, and when I press it it changes from zero to a number, under 1000, and will not reduce. Subsequent presses causes the number to increase until it hits a limit. I think the number is credits (money). But I have not found a way to decrease the number, and no idea what it is for. This button has an Icon with a green circle or two, with 4 sets of inward pointing chevrons.

What is it?