An oil tanker owned and operated by Japan's Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd was damaged in a "tremor" and there was no evidence of an attack, the Omani coastguard said on Wednesday, while Iran reported an earthquake to its south.
"The boat was hit by a tremor ...we have no information of an attack," an official at the Omani coastguard told Reuters.
Earlier reports said that the oil tanker was damaged in an explosion suspected to have been caused by an attack near the strait of Hormuz.
A crew member suffered minor injuries and the ship was heading to port to assess the damage, the company said.
An official at Iran's International Institute of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering told Reuters: "A minor earthquake of 3.4 magnitude happened in Bandar Abbas."
Oman had not closed its side of the strait of Hormuz and it was "business as usual," an official from the Omani ministry of transport said.
The ship, the "M. STAR", was loaded with 270,204 tons when the incident occurred in waters off Oman, Mitsui O.S.K. said.
It said the ship had been bound for Chiba port near Tokyo.
The explosion occurred at around 00:30 a.m. local time on Wednesday (2030 GMT Tuesday), the transport ministry in Tokyo said.
The ministry said there had been no reports of piracy in the area.
There was no leakage of oil from the tanker, a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) with 16 Filipino and 15 Indian crew members on board.
It was sailing under its own power towards Fujairah port in the United Arab Emirates to check the damage, a spokeswoman for Japan's second-biggest shipper said.
Around 17 million barrels per day of oil flow via the Strait of Hormuz, and Middle East crude accounts for 90 percent of Japan's total imports.
The location of the explosion near a lifeboat at the rear starboard side of the ship suggested the blast was unlikely to have been caused by oil on the tanker, Mitsui O.S.K. was quoted as saying by the ministry.
"In addition, a crew member saw light on the horizon just before the explosion, so (Mitsui O.S.K.) believes there is a possibility it was caused by an outside attack," the ministry said in its earlier statement.
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