Door to hell: burning crater is gradually running out of fuel

One of the world’s most spectacular methane emitters is losing its sparkle. The Darvaza crater in central Turkmenistan has been flaring steadily less gas since last summer. The crater is a giant sinkhole thought to have been broken open by accident by Soviet energy prospectors in the 1960s. For perhaps two decades it emitted unburned methane, which is 80 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Engineers lit it in the 1980s and it’s been alight ever since, drawing a trickle of tourists across the Karakum desert from the capital, Ashgabat. But Turkmenistan always had less to gain from tourism than gas, and in 2022 President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov alighted on a win-win: drill a well to draw the Darvaza gas away before it burns, and burnish Turkmenistan’s credentials as a responsible player in the energy transition. From a visual point of view it’s a shame though. There’s not much else to see in the Karakum.