Gateway of Hell: Turkmenistan

• 11 Jan 2022

Why in News

Recently, Turkmenistan has decided to find a way to extinguish a fire in a huge natural gas (Mixture of methane, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulphide and helium) the Darvaza gas crater also known as the ‘Gateway to Hell’.

• Turkmenistan has been at the centre of methane leakages. Out of the 50 most severe methane gas leakages onshore oil and gas operations in 2019, 31 were in Turkmenistan.
• In addition to this, one of these leakages, “had a climate impact roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of all the cars in Arizona”.

Severity of Methane Leaks

• Methane is the primary contributor to the formation of ground-level ozone, a hazardous air pollutant and greenhouse gas, exposure to which causes 1 million premature deaths every year.
• Methane is also a powerful greenhouse gas. Over a 20-year period, it is 80 times more potent at warming than carbon dioxide.

Key Points

• About:
  
  • Located in the Karakum desert, 260 kilometres away from Turkmenistan’s capital, Ashgabat, the crater has been burning for the last 50 years.
  • The crater has become a significant tourist attraction in the country. In 2018, the country’s president officially renamed it as the “Shining of Karakum”.
• Origin of Crater:
  
  • The details of the origin are not actually known but it has been said that the crater was created in 1971 during a Soviet drilling operation.
    
    • Soviet geologists were drilling for oil in the Karakum desert when they hit a pocket of natural gas by mistake, which caused the earth to collapse and ended up forming three huge sinkholes.
    • A sinkhole is a depression in the ground that has no natural external surface drainage.These are regions formed when underlying limestone bedrock is dissolved by groundwater.
  • Locals have also said that the crater was formed in the 1960s but wasn’t lit on fire until the 1980s.
  • It has also been said that since oil and gas were very expensive commodities during Soviet rule, the formation of the crater has remained a confidential piece of information.
• Reason for Closing:
  
  • It negatively affects both the environment and the health of the people living nearby.
  • Loss of valuable natural resources for which they can get significant profits and use them for improving the wellbeing of people.
  • Hinders the accelerated industrial development of the subsoil riches of central Karakum.

Source: IE