An oil tanker collided with a U.S. Navy ship near the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday but no one was hurt and shipping traffic in the waterway, through which 40 percent of the world's seaborne oil exports pass, was not affected, officials said.
"Both vessels are okay and the Strait of Hormuz is not closed, and business is as usual there," an Oman coast guard official told Reuters, declining to be named under briefing rules.
The Bahrain-based U.S. Fifth Fleet said the Panamanian-flagged, Japanese-owned bulk oil tanker M/V Otowasan collided with the USS Porter, a guided-missile destroyer, in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The navy vessel remained able to operate under its own power after the collision, which was not combat-related, the statement added without elaborating on how the accident happened. An investigation was underway.
By: Brant
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This is interesting because it makes me thing of unexpected crisis triggers. For example, what if an Iranian ship/FAC collided with a tanker and the resulting disruption to traffic in the Straits of Hormuz caused an international crisis? This sort of scenario is worthy of exploration using wargaming. For a start, would anyone believe it was an accident? Events like these are interesting because it's less likely that they are covered by existing contingency plans and the motives on each side would be unclear.
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