Saint Magnus: The Door to Hell

Derweze (or Darvaza) is a small village in Turkmenistan in the middle of a desert pretty void of anything interesting. Except that is where the Door to Hell is located.
Wait, what?

No, the other hell. This is only hell to people suffering from harp-phobia or vertigo.

The story is this; the area where Derweze is situated is rich in natural gas which to Energy Company Executives is like honey is to bees or face-painting tents are to hippies. What the geologists (or possibly satanists with a degree) chose to do was the same old thing they always do. They set up a drilling rig, maybe something like this:

After it was set up, they probably pushed the start button and poured a cup of coffee and started planning what they'd do with their enormous bonuses. What could possibly go wrong with building a massive structure over a swiss-cheese, gas infested rock and then put a big drill through it.

Right in the middle of the eternal Aston Martin vs Jaguar discussion the whole rig disappeared into an enormous hole leaving nothing but...well, actually just "nothing" on the surface.
The geologists stared at each-other in disbelief and ransacked themselves if it was their area of responsibility to make sure the drilling rig didn't fall right down a big fucking hole! After a silent nod of mutual agreement that it was probably somewhere in the fine-prints of all of their contracts, and possibly some rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock that all ended in a tie (somebody must stop choosing Spock) they all rolled up their sleeves and went to work.
As the ginourmous hole spewed out incredible amounts of Methane gas into the atmosphere they all agreed that if they tossed in a lit match the methane would start to burn off and Bob's your uncle.

This gas-find will selfcombust in five seconds, good luck Jim.

A cunning plan, with one little drawback; a slight underestimation of the amount of gas.
You see, it was back in 1971 they set it on fire and it has been burning ever since.