The crater is only 30 meters deep, but seems to lead straight into the bowels of the earth. AT 260 km north of Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, is one of the most distressing tourist attractions in the world: a gaping hole ablaze with some 70 meters in diameter, in which gas has been burning continuously for several decades. The authoritarian president of this reclusive country of Central Asia, Gourbangouly Berdymoukhamedov, ordered, Saturday, January 8, to extinguish the flames which set ablaze the giant gas crater nicknamed the “Hell’s Gate“, state television reported. Objective: to take advantage of these natural resources.
In view of these new statements, franceinfo has looked (well, not too closely) on this nightmarish phenomenon.
A modern “legend”
No one knows exactly what caused the creation of this crater, formed in the middle of the Karakum desert. The most widely accepted account of him is that 1971, Soviet scientists accidentally pierced an underground pocket of gas while drilling for deposits. The ground would have subsided, creating the crater. Fearing that it would emit toxic gases, the authorities decided to set it on fire, believing that it would dry up the field in a few weeks, considerably underestimating the amount of natural gas trapped – and in particular methane – in the ground. The crater would have been on fire for fifty years.
Canadian explorer George Kourounis, the first man to venture inside the crater, in 2013 – dressed in a heat-resistant coverall and clipped to a kevlar harness – delivered to National Geographic another hypothesis. “What I heard from Turkmen geologists, who have been there for decades, is that the collapse may have taken place in the 1960s and the hole was not lit for years. 1980 “, he explained. “I have no evidence to support these claims. I don’t know what really happened and there is no written record.”, specified the adventurer, at the heart of a documentary.
Few tourists venture to Turkmenistan, a former Soviet Union that has become a totalitarian state, where opponents are silenced and the media controlled by the state. However, the few visitors do not fail to make a detour via this “Hell’s Gate“. The site, particularly impressive, has even been highlighted by the president himself who, as part of the propaganda and the construction of his image as a strongman of the country, likes to make controlled skids on the edges of the precipice (at 37 seconds in the video below).
An environmental nightmare
To justify the fact of extinguishing the fire in this gas crater, President Gourbangouly Berdymoukhamedov, considered that the flames had “a negative effect on the environment and the health of neighboring populations“. If the nearest village, Darvaza, has only 350 souls, the nuisance is very real, explains Philippe Bousquet, researcher at the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences (LSCE) and specialist in methane. “Burning, methane becomes CO2, but what is harmful to the direct environment is all that goes with it: there is probably also sulfur, odorous gases and aerosols which must also rise up and can be harmful to people around “, he explains to franceinfo.
Finally, from a climatic point of view this time, the damage caused by the “Door to Hell” is indeed limited by the fire. “Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 “, continues the climatologist. “So if you have a massive leaking deposit, the ‘torcher’ [le brûler] so that this methane becomes CO2 remains ‘less worse’ than letting it escape as it is, explains the specialist. It’s ‘less worse’, but it’s not ideal either: from a climate point of view, the best thing to do is to leave the natural gas in the ground and, no matter what, prevent it from. to flee. But here, Turkmenistan’s goal is probably to put out the fire to recover the natural gas so that it can be used, upgraded and sold. “
According to the IEA, the International Energy Agency (site in English), Tukmenistan is also the fifth largest emitter of methane in the world. It emits more than China for a population of only 6 million. Huge shows partly attributed to leaks like this one revealed this Bloomberg investigation (article in English) published in October. However, methane is much more harmful than CO2 in terms of global warming. Thus, combating its emissions is a considerable lever in the fight against the announced rise in temperatures.
An untapped, but polluting financial windfall
“We are wasting valuable natural resources for which we could receive gains” and who could “to increase the well-being of our people”, said Gourbangouly Berdymoukhamedov on state television. Because the Turkmens are indeed sitting on a natural gas deposit of considerable value. In 2021 alone, theRussia has doubled its gas imports from Turkmenistan. According to President of Turkmenistan, China imports around 40 billion cubic meters a year, but it could reach 100 billion cubic meters in the future.
Thus, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, “to extinguish this deposit and – provided that this is possible – to develop it by natural gas, would be the same as burning it as is the case today. The difference is that it would at least be used to generate electricity. or heat “, decrypts Philippe Bousquet. However, this natural gas remains a fossil fuel. How, when the Paris agreement calls for a considerable reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, justify the future exploitation of this deposit? “A central modern gas-fired emits about half as much as a power plant typical charcoal. It always emits too much and it would be better to use other non-emitting or less emitting energies, but let’s say that, again, it is ‘less worse’ “, specifies Philippe Bousquet.
“The maximum amount of CO2 equivalent that can be emitted if we do not want to exceed the increase of 2 ° C with a good chance has been estimated by the scientific community, and we know that we will have to leave a good part of the fossil resources available in the ground if we are to achieve this. Unfortunately, some countries will continue to extract and use for a long time these resources for their development, such as coal or natural gas, of which they have very large quantities ” , explains the specialist. “In Europe, we therefore consider natural gas as a transitional energy. It is clearly an energy that emits greenhouse gases. Accepting compromises in these complex geopolitical systems allows us to move forward, slowly of course, but d ‘move forward all the same “, notes the climatologist.