Speech by MOS Alvin Tan at the Oil Spill Management Symposium 2026

Ms Hwang Yu-Ning,
CEO, NParks

Partners and friends

Introduction

Good morning everybody. I have a few things that I thought would be very useful to share, particularly quite salient because of the global situation with regards to energy, oil, and the likes, and how do we balance the world's need for energy with the very important work that all of you do in safeguarding our green as well as our blue spaces.

Many of you know that Singapore sits at the heart of one of the world's busiest motorways, and in fact we are the world's third largest oil trading hub and the sixth largest refinery export hub. I will pause here a little bit to just share what we are doing at the government level, particularly at the Energy Market Authority, which is under the Ministry of Trade. Why Singapore? Why is Singapore one of the world's most preeminent oil trading and bunkering hubs and gas refinery hubs, and why is it important to us?

Well, the issues that now afflict the Straits of Hormuz has brought this issue into the fore about energy security, and oil and gas will be refined somewhere. But why do the world's major hubs now choose Singapore? It's because we are able to do it efficiently, we are able to do it in a way in which we best use our connectivity and our geographical merits, such that they are able to then store here, ship here, refine here, and then to distribute this across the world. When the supply is constrained, it affects the world, and if you look around the region, for example, the Philippines, about 90 percent of their oil imports come from the Straits of Hormuz. Their oil prices afflicting everyday lives is significant. And so we play a very important role as an oil trading hub and energy trading hub to ensure that this flows across the world

It's also very important that, as we do that, we must, as Singapore, be an honest broker. What do I mean by being an honest broker? It means that even though we have all of these supplies in Singapore, we cannot say in a crisis where this is not expensive and which the supply is reduced. We cannot say, "I'm just going to commandeer it. I'm going to take it." It cannot. In fact, 50 years ago, when asked a very similar question, our founding Prime Minister said, "No, we won't, because if the oil flows and the gas flows come through, and if we just take it and we don't pay the market price, then we are not trusted, and that's a very, very critical part of why we do it.

But at the same time, as we build this very critical energy capability and secure oil flows, we must protect our green spaces and our blue spaces, because our waters are also home to a wide range of rich biodiversity, of which many of you are stewards of. This is why we are here today. How do we meet the demands of both? Because it requires a very delicate balancing act. At the same time, we must keep Singapore as a thriving maritime hub and ensure our marine environment remains resilient and also well protected. So, let's now go back to the June 2024 oil spill. Oil spills do remind us of how fragile this ecosystem and balance can be.

Impact of June 2024 Oil Spill

When the oil spill occurred in June 2024, many of you know that 400 tonnes of oil were spilled into the sea after two vessels collided at Pasir Panjang Terminal.

Oil slicks emerged at many biodiversity-rich areas, including the Southern Islands, Labrador Nature Reserve, as well as East Coast Park. I think we were there at Sentosa as well, looking and making sure the booms were working. Our volunteers, our partners, our public officers stepped in very quickly when the oil spill occurred, working together to clean and to contain the oil spill in the immediate aftermath.

NParks worked with the scientific community and volunteers to assess the ecological impact on the impacted sites. While they discovered that there was no significant impact during the preliminary surveys, the longer-term repercussions can unfold, and therefore effective oil spill management must go beyond this quick response.

How do we act downstream? It must be grounded in science, data and long-term mitigation strategies, and this means that we must understand our marine environment deeply, establish a very strong baseline information, as well as undertake systematic and sustained monitoring, so that we can better understand the full scale of the oil spill's ecological impact.

Oil Spill Symposium

I mentioned downstream, but to make it less onerous for ITOP and out other partners, by doing it better upstream. And that means to plan, to build capacity and to also forge these partnerships, which we are forging during this two-day symposium.

Therefore, we have policymakers, responders, researchers, the industry, the community partners here in Jurong Lake Gardens under one roof to share ideas and to strengthen our knowledge base.

A key part of this is understanding the longer-term ecological impact of oil spills. In October 2024, that was a couple of months after the oil spill, NParks announced that they would be teaming up with the NUS Tropical Marine Science Institute (TMSI), St. John's Island National Marine Laboratory (SJINML) and the National Institute of Education (NIE) to conduct a national monitoring programme to study the ecological impact and recovery of our marine biodiversity and habitats post-oil spill.

Now, we have rolled out two research projects under this programme, with a focus on collecting baseline data at key biodiversity areas and of species of interest.

Now, the insights that we've uncovered will form an important foundation for future mitigation and restoration strategies for our environment.

Project Details

Let me now go into a bit of the project details, so that we know what we have done and what we can do, and build upon this project. As part of both studies, which I mentioned earlier on, biological samples from marine molluscs as well as marine life living in sediment were collected from intertidal zones of various sites, including those visibly impacted by the oil spill.

Now this allows researchers to study the oil spill's impact on tiny organisms living between the tide marks and along the shore, which would face the greatest exposure to oil pollutants, and assess the environmental stress caused.

Now the first research project, led by the NUS Tropical Marine Science Institute and St. John's Island National Marine Laboratory, studies post-oil spill changes in marine life and levels of oil compounds within the sediment of the Southern Islands.

What did the study find? It found that the amount of oil in the sediment of Bendera Bay (which is on St John's Island) and Eagle Bay (which is on Lazarus Island) - two of the visibly impacted sites - fell from higher levels in August 2024 to undetectable levels by November 2025. So just over a year.

The abundance of certain organisms in the sediment also appears to be increasing after facing a significant decline.

These are encouraging signs that suggest the natural recovery processes could be underway at these sites. Sometimes nature produces something that really astounds us, and we are seeing some of these emerging now.

Since the oil spill, around 11,000 specimens have been collected from both sites, and taxonomic work is underway to determine which species were most affected and to understand their recovery patterns.

Now that's the first project. The second project, conducted by the National Institute of Education, uses marine molluscs to monitor for environmental stress.

Mollusc samples were collected from 10 coastal sites across Singapore for over a year, and these were tested for cellular, biochemical and molecular changes, which can indicate stress before any major damage is visible.

They were preliminary results, and they show that the molluscs' biomarkers were able to tell different sampling sites apart, indicating that they are suitable for tracking marine environmental conditions.

Both studies are slated to be completed by the end of this year, and researchers from NUS and NIE will share more, I think, during their talks later today.

Oil Spill Management a Collective Effort

I want next to talk about how oil pill management requires all of us. Effective oil spill management is a collective effort - the scientific community brings evidence and insight. The industry partners bring assets, they bring operational experience. And of course, government agencies - NParks, and others, MPA as well, play a critical coordination role.

Of course, members of the public and members of the community.
In the wake of the June 2024 oil spill, over 1,500 volunteers signed up to help with coastal clean-ups, beach patrols and site surveys. In fact, if I remember, we had to turn some away because many were very interested in helping out.

Now, this community spirit has endured even beyond the immediate oil spill incident.

For example, 100 citizen scientists have been enlisted for the NIE-led study, and have undergone training in biomarker observation to support NIE researchers in field sampling and sample processing.

NParks will also train more citizen scientists to conduct long-term biodiversity monitoring surveys at selected sites across Singapore, as part of its Intertidal Watch programme.

Conclusion

Friends, in closing, I would like to thank all of you for stepping up, both in peacetime as well as in times of significant stress, to help us steward our seas and also our blue spaces.

I really look forward to all of the insights that we will glean together, and if you do have good ideas, please surface them. We already have some good ideas this morning, and that's the energy that I hope you will bring to the oil spill symposium today. Thank you very much, and I wish you all a successful oil symposium.