Dubai: Damage to the Japanese oil tanker M. Star in the Arabian Gulf on Wednesday is due to unknown reasons, according to WAM, after the incident was initially blamed on a large wave caused by a tremor.
The Japanese shipping company said it did not believe a wave caused an explosion aboard one of its tankers, passing through the mouth of the Arabian Gulf, but refused to speculate yesterday on what had set off the blast, until it had more information.
The concerned authorities in the UAE are now carrying out an investigation into what caused the incident. None of the ship's crew were injured and no environmental pollution occurred as a result of the accident.
The explosion aboard the M. Star supertanker happened shortly after midnight as it entered the Strait of Hormuz, heading out of the Gulf, Japanese shipping company Mitsui OSK Lines said.
Authorities on both sides of the narrow Strait of Hormuz dismissed suggestions of a deliberate strike, pointing instead to natural causes, such as an unusually strong wave that slammed into the side of the ship. The US naval fleet, that patrols the region, said the cause of the blast remains unclear.
A photo released by the Emirates news agency WAM after the tanker arrived in Fujairah port for inspections showed a large, square-shaped dent beginning near the water line on the rear starboard side of the ship's hull.
Japanese oil tanker damaged by tremor in Oman
Mitsui said the explosion seemed to be caused by "an attack from external sources" while the tanker passed through Omani waters in the western part of the strategically vital waterway, a narrow chokepoint between Oman and Iran at the Gulf's mouth.
"We do not think the cause of explosion was due to freak waves," Mitsui spokeswoman Eiko Mizuno said in Tokyo. "Waves can capsize vessels, but not cause explosions." A Japanese transport ministry official in charge of crisis management declined to comment Thursday.
One of the tanker's 31 crew members noticed a flash of light right before the explosion, suggesting something may have struck the vessel. The explosion occurred at the back of the tanker, near an area where rescue boats are stored, causing cuts to a crew member who was struck with broken glass.
Yuki Shimoda, an official at Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, said earlier the ministry did not immediately suspect an attack, but added that the possibility could not be ruled out. The tanker, loaded with 270,000 tonnes of oil, was heading from the petroleum port of Das island in the UAE to the Japanese port of Chiba outside Tokyo.
Attacks are rare in Gulf
If the tanker was attacked, it would be a rare assault on a merchant ship in the Gulf or at the Strait of Hormuz, a transit point for about 40 per cent of oil shipped by tankers worldwide.
Al Qaida has, in the past, carried out attacks on oil infrastructure on land in nearby Saudi Arabia, as well as a 2002 suicide bombing against a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden.
