Crater fire target of Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said Saturday that he wants to extinguish the “Gates of Hell,” the infamous flaming natural gas crater that has burned in the Central Asian country for decades, Agence France-Presse reported.

The president raised environmental and economic concerns and asked his government to find ways to put the fire out.

The crater “negatively affects both the environment and the health of the people living nearby,” Berdymukhamedov said. “We are losing valuable natural resources for which we could get significant profits and use them for improving the well-being of our people.”

Officially called the Darvaza gas crater, the blazing pit in the middle of the Karakum desert has long been a draw for the few tourists permitted to visit Turkmenistan. About 200 feet wide by some measures and at least 70 feet deep, it cuts a dramatic image against the vast expanse of empty land surrounding it.

The crater’s formation has often been attributed to a Soviet drilling accident in 1971; geologists supposedly set a fire in one of the large sinkholes created by the accident to try to burn off the methane there.

But its origin remains a mystery, and Turkmen geologists said the crater may have been formed in the 1960s and lit two decades later, BBC Travel reported.

Berdymukhamedov also ordered experts to try to extinguish the flames in 2010, but to no avail.

Canadian-born scientific explorer George Kourounis became the first person to touch the bottom of the crater in 2013, wearing a heat-resistant suit. Reaching the bottom “felt like being on another planet,” Kourounis said in 2020.

“The walls are lit up. Everything is glowing orange from the fire. There’s poisonous gas everywhere,” he said.