Gates of Hell to be closed, why Turkmenistan wants attraction put out

Gates of Hell: The flames in Turkmenistan's desert have been burning since the early 1970s. Photo / Alexander Vershinin, AP

The president of Turkmenistan is calling for an end to one of the country's most notable but infernal sights — the blazing natural gas crater widely referred to as the "Gates of Hell."

The desert crater located about 260 kilometers north of the capital, Ashgabat, has burned for decades and is a popular sight for the small number of tourists who come to Turkmenistan, a country which is difficult to enter.

The Turkmen news site Turkmenportal said a 1971 gas-drilling collapse formed the crater, which is about 60 meters in diameter and 20 meters deep. To prevent the spread of gas, geologists set a fire, expecting the gas to burn off in a few weeks.

The spectacular if unwelcome fire that has burned ever since is so renowned that state TV showed President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov speeding around it in an off-road truck in 2019.

But Berdymukhamedov has ordered his government to look for ways to put the fire out because it is causing ecological damage and affecting the health of people living in the area, state newspaper Neitralny Turkmenistan reported Saturday.

"We are losing valuable natural resources for which we could get significant profits and use them for improving the well-being of our people," the president told state television.

There have been previous attempts to extinguish the infernal attraction. In 2010 president Berdymukhamedov commissioned a team to see if there was a way to snuff out the decades old flames in the desert.

Other than tourists scientists have an affinity with the burning crater. Studies have studied the gates of hell to see if microscopic life could survive in conditions comparable to another planet.

"We found several organisms at the bottom of the crater that weren't known to any of our databases and was thriving," expedition leader George Kourounis told the BBC.

The firs man to enter the Gates of Hell in 2013, Kourounis said he was surprised to hear that Turkmenistan now wants the Gates closed.

- Associated Press with additional reporting.