Damac Bangkok Leak Puts Oil in Drains, Draws Monitoring

An oil leak at a Bangkok data center has contaminated 32 cubic meters of water in the city's drain system, and Thailand's Pollution Control Department said Tuesday the leak had been contained and that it would continue to monitor the area. Local media traced the source to Damac Digital Thailand's BKK 01 facility on Rama 9 Road. The Nation reported that residents raised the alarm on Monday evening after noticing oil and chemical odors rising from their drains.

Cleanup crews deployed oil-absorbing booms to stop the spread, then applied an environmentally friendly solution to break down the oil, the pollution agency said. Damac Digital's contractors removed the contaminated water and sludge from the system. An inspection after the cleanup found no volatile organic compounds or hydrogen sulphide in the air.

Damac Digital is the data center arm of UAE-based property firm Damac and was formerly known as Edgnex. Hussain Sajwani founded the company in 2021, and its first operations were at a 12MW campus in Riyadh. The Bangkok project was announced in 2024 as two 10MW data center buildings, which makes BKK 01 one of the company's newer urban bets.

The 32 cubic meters are already out of the system, but the location, not the volume, is the event. This leak surfaced in a residential neighborhood's drains rather than in an industrial outfall, and the response began with what neighbors could smell. Damac Digital is asking Bangkok to accept a pair of 10MW buildings on a road where people live close enough to notice. The pollution agency's monitoring will check the air and water; the permitting record carries no such cleanup schedule. For investors pricing data center risk in dense cities, that line is the premium.