The CCP's #1 priority is stability to enable continued economic development. That's why they advance their more adversarial goals via sustained incremental efforts. They view democracies as vulnerable as they so often change leadership, whereas they can sustain very long term goals.
Life tends to be more banal than James Bond. The simple explanation here is that something went wrong and sparked a fire during maintenance work, likely welding, and because the ship was in dock with a bazillion service lines running through the hatches, the fire was able to spread to find fuel trivially. Based on a comment I read from one of the DC folks fighting the fire, they don't know the origin, but they do know it got into the fuel lines, which caused a minor explosion. The odds are pretty high they're just gonna have to let the fuel burn off.