An oil tanker carrying around $9 million worth of petroleum products was in collision with a container vessel off the Dubai coast yesterday, setting both vessels on fire and sending up a thick plume of black smoke.

The tanker, called the Kashmir, was built in 1988. It was carrying some 30,000 tons of oil condensates from Iran to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) port of Jebel Ali, oil industry sources said.

The second ship was a container vessel called Sima Buoy, which was leaving the port when the incident took place, ship brokers said.