I thought I’d already found the gates to hell. After all, I have lived in New Jersey.
Then I heard about this giant open pit of gas that’s been burning non-stop for fifty years in a county under an autocratic regime, and I considered that I just didn’t appreciate spray tans enough.
Today’s Moment of Science… the Darvaza Gas Crater.
Turkmenistan was still a part of the Soviet Union in 1971 when engineers went to work on this nondescript patch of dirt in the Karakum Desert, suspecting it had potential as an oil producing region. The desert floor had other ideas. After all of their equipment and their drilling rig had been set up, the ground gave way under the massive amount of weight to reveal a giant underground cavern brimming with natural gas.
So they did the responsible thing and lit the fucking pit on fire.
To be fair, ‘light it on fucking fire’ wasn’t a crazy idea. It’s somewhat normal in industrial settings for natural gas to be burned off when there’s no way for it to be processed immediately. Other fossil fuels like oil can be stored after capturing pretty much indefinitely, but natural gas needs to be processed right away. This controlled burn is called flaring. Given that it doesn’t take much methane in the air to build up potential for an explosion, it’s a standard safety precaution.
It burns fuel seemingly unnecessarily, which annoys environmentalists.
It burns fuel that could be sold, which annoys people who would like to sell that fuel.
It’s really not great news. Most individual incidents of gas flaring don’t that long though.
There aren’t many things Turkmenistan is known for. A history of banning things for being ‘insufficiently Turkmen,” that list including opera and the circus. Non-existent freedom of the press. A weirdo dictator with a bafflingly sexual relationship with his horses. Allegedly.
Also, it’s ranked 52nd in size and 4th in natural gas deposits.
So one thing this pit of despair- the country- has going for it?
It can keep this pit of despair- the burning crater- on fucking fire for a long goddamn time.
The Darvaza gas crater is 50 years old now and there’s no indication that it’ll stop burning any time soon.
It’s a popular camping destination. As you do.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, resolute that with everything I know about Turkmenistan, I’m still never moving back to New Jersey.
One of the few things I remember from HS Chemistry (1966) was about masses of gasses. More specifically, something like propane is heavier than air, so is a particular fire hazard near the floor. (Also a ‘pousse-cafe’, layered liquers. Liquid, not gas, but it’s the same idea. Now, I can easily imagine a glass ‘brimming’ with liquer, just surface tension holding it there. But when I try to imagine a container ‘brimming’ with methane, … ? Do gasses ‘brim ‘?
“So they did the responsible thing and lit the fucking pit on fire” well to be fair there were probably engineers in the team. I have yet to meet an engineer who wouldn’t want to light it on fire or explode it.
“A weirdo dictator with a bafflingly sexual relationship with his horse…” Oh it’s that country, which I only know becuase of John Oliver.