Why can't the 'Hell's Gate' burned for 50 years in Turkmenistan be filled?

The methane leak pit, also known as "Hell's Gate", has been burning for about 50 years and is very difficult to deal with because if you just fill the hole, the gas will still escape, causing harm to the environment .

Ten years ago, National Geographic explorer George Kourounis climbed into Hell's Gate. The 30m deep, 70m wide hole in north-central Turkmenistan is officially called the Darvaza crater (named after the nearby village), but the nickname Hell's Gate better describes the phenomenon, which is a methane crater. caught fire decades ago in a remote area of ​​the Karakum Desert and has burned continuously since then. In 2013, Kourounis became the first person to climb inside the burning crater. After two years of planning, he only had 17 minutes to collect gas data and soil samples before having to escape. "Those 17 minutes were engraved in my mind. It was much scarier, much hotter and much bigger than I thought ," National Geographic quoted Kourounis as saying.

The expedition brought attention to the Darvaza crater around the world. The Turkmenistan government once vowed to permanently extinguish the fire caused by methane gas before deciding to leave Hell's Gate alone.

With huge oil and gas reserves, Turkmenistan has countless industrial zones where methane, a potent greenhouse gas, leaks into the atmosphere. Earlier this summer, US and Turkmenistan authorities discussed ways to cooperate to seal these areas, possibly including the Darvaza crater. But putting out fires is not an easy task. "The process could go wrong. I'm very concerned about the risk of an explosion ," said Guillermo Rein, a fire scientist at Imperial College London.

Despite its scary appearance, the Darvaza crater is not so strange. Also known as "Karakum Light" in Turkmenistan, the crater is located in the Amu-Darya basin, a geological formation containing unknown amounts of oil and natural gas, mainly methane. Most methane gas escapes from the Earth's crust. If it catches fire, it will burn until the fuel, heat source, or oxygen-rich air is gone. Typically, methane gas in the region is exploited by the oil and gas industry or leaks above ground or underwater unnoticed.

Environmentalists and the government of Turkmenistan are increasingly paying attention to the Darvaza fire pit due to its contribution to climate change, Newsweek reported on June 21. The Darvaza fire pit, known as Turkmenistan's "Gate to Hell," has been spewing methane gas into the atmosphere for about 50 years.

Darvaza fire pit, known as the "Gate of Hell" of Turkmenistan. (Photo: Giles Clarke).

Methane, the main component of natural gas, is a global warming greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than CO ₂ in its first 20 years of entering the atmosphere, according to the United Nations Environment Program.

"As far as I know, the crater was formed during the Soviet period, when the Soviet Union tried to drill for natural gas here. At that time, drilling technology was not sophisticated enough and the drilling rig collapsed, and natural gas captured. The head escapes, flying into the atmosphere instead of being captured ," said Stefan Green, director of the Microbiome and Genomics Facility at Rush University, USA.

After that, the crater was burned, it is unclear whether it was intentional or not. "If it was intentional, maybe the purpose was to burn off the gas instead of letting it escape uncontrollably ," Green said.

The Darvaza fire pit is 70m wide and 20m deep. In 2022, the president of Turkmenistan instructed officials to find ways to extinguish the fire and capture the released methane gas. "Natural gas rising out of control is an environmental disaster and flaring is actually beneficial. In this way, methane is converted into CO ₂ . The release of CO ₂ is also harmful to warming globally, but not as harmful as methane ," Green said.

One of the popular suggestions is to fill the crater . But Green believes this is unlikely to resolve the situation . "Basically, you have a large-scale gas leak. Unless you plug the leak, filling the crater is useless because the gas will still escape. I think filling the crater will not work." prevent leaks. To prevent leaks, it may be necessary to drill some places near the crater to pull the gas out of the crater , " he said.

Besides, focusing too much on filling craters can also distract from fixing Turkmenistan's main sources of methane emissions. This is one of the world's largest methane emitters, largely due to leaks from oil and gas production, with emissions equivalent to more than 70 million tons of CO ₂ per year, according to the website Our World In Data.