“Hell's Gate” crater: What if Russian workers had created this greenhouse gas bomb?
A 70 meter long and 30 meter deep creater, the “Gateway to Hell”, was accidentally created by Russian workers in the 1970s.
While drilling in a huge natural gas cavern in the Central Asian country of Turkmenistan, toxic fumes suddenly emerged from the hole and began to spread. To prevent the fuel from burning, the Russians decided to set fire to the gas.
According to George Kourouni, a Greek-Canadian adventurer, explorer and storm chaser who visited the site in 2013, the origin of this huge inferno is unclear and remains, to this day, a mystery. Kourouni, who explored the crater for around twenty minutes, believes that “the accident could also have happened in 1960, and the fire only started in the 1980s”. In flames for over 50 years, this greenhouse gas bomb, whose methane leaks have a direct impact on the global thermometer, has become a veritable tourist attraction in the country. Forbes reports that no fewer than 50,000 tourists visited the crater between 2008 and 2018.
Today, Serdar Berdymoukhammedov, President of Turkmenistan, is keen to put an end to this incessant fire with the help of the United States.
(MH with AsD - Source : Ouest France - Illustration : Unsplash)