n October 1978, then Minister for Labour Ong Pang Boon appointed a committee of inquiry to investigate the cause of the accident. The committee was headed by then Senior District Judge Michael Khoo, who was assisted by Foo See Jiok and Chua Teck Hock. Foo was a port captain with Esso Singapore, while Chua was a senior assistant director with the Ministry of Health’s Department of Scientific Services.30
The hearing lasted 20 days during which 87 witnesses testified, and 176 exhibits were presented.31 Witnesses include fitter Lim; Glen Dillon, Shell refinery’s operations superintendent; Abraham Paul, an electrician with Jurong Shipyard; workers who escaped the explosion; Captain Wong Kum Kay, commanding officer of the Singapore Armed Forces bomb disposal unit; Tan Boon Kee, senior electrical engineer of the Public Utilities Board; John Nixon of H. M. Factory Inspectorate, United Kingdom; Robert James Bann, principal surveyor for Singapore of Lloyd’s Register of Shipping; and others.32
The committee of inquiry found that the explosion and fire were caused by the failure of Jurong Shipyard’s safety system as well as the presence of explosive vapour on board the Spyros as a result of the contamination of its fuel oil with crude oil. The hot work carried out by Lim using a cutting torch during the repair process was the source of ignition that resulted in the blast and fire.33
In its report, the committee said that the contamination of the fuel oil could have occurred in four possible ways: due to contaminated loading lines in Anacortes; contamination during the loading of bunkers as a result of using the contaminated loading lines; contamination from the use of a contaminated cargo tank on board the tanker; and either a deliberate or accidental contamination due to crude oil cargo being pumped into the bunker tanks.34 After accepting evidence from expert witnesses, the inquiry concluded that the main cause of contamination of the fuel oil tanks on board the Spyros was a result of the “deliberate diversion of crude oil cargo into the bunker tanks”.35
The recommendations by the committee include: prohibiting the use of cutting torches on board vessels under repair, and restricting the use of torches to specific jobs only; carrying out a thorough review of Jurong Shipyard’s safety system and incorporating a scheme to monitor its implementation; appointing a coordinator to ensure that all safety measures would be adhered to before the start of any repairwork; and limiting the number of people allowed to work in an engine room and providing for adequate means of escape from the engine room