Photos of the damage to the VLCC MV M. Star. Click on the thumbnails above for larger images.

Questions Swirl About Damaged Japanese Tanker

Shipping officials said Thursday that they were examining the hull of a Japanese oil tanker that was mysteriously damaged this week as it traversed a strategically vital waterway between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. The ship’s owner has said that it may have been attacked.

The company released photographs on Thursday showing a large, square dent in the black-and-red hull of the tanker and broken railings along its deck, damage that appears unlikely to have been caused by a wave. Photos of the interior show broken ceiling panels and exposed insulation and wiring in one of the dining rooms.

Theodore Karasik, a Dubai-based security analyst, said that the leading theory there was that an old mine was adrift and bumped the ship; if it had degraded, it could have simply produced a pressure blast. There are still mines in the region from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Another possibility, he said, was a collision with another ship.

Moosa Murad, general manager of the Port of Fujairah, where the tanker docked on Wednesday, told Reuters that he suspected that the ship had been involved in a collision, perhaps with a submarine or sea mine, but added, “We don’t know what it was.”