Diamonds From The Deep

They may be a girl's best friend but the discovery of tiny stones in crude is being welcomed by oil producers and scientists too.

A major oil company has come up with a scientific breakthrough that will have people wondering whether a fortune is hidden in their petrol tank.

Researchers at a special unit of ChevronTexaco have discovered microscopic diamonds in crude oil. They believe that the find could be used for new developments in pharmaceuticals and microelectronics. Analysts have speculated that the discovery could pile further dollars on to the already inflated oil price.

The diamonds or "diamondoids", as they are known when they are microscopic in size, weigh one billionth of a billionth of a carat. One million diamondoids laid end-to-end would fit across a pinhead.

At this stage the researchers believe the diamonds aren't terribly concentrated: at best they have been able to extract only a teaspoonful from every five litres of crude oil.

The race is now on to find applications for these new diamonds, and ChevronTexaco has thrown the issue open to a wider group of scientists and academics. The diamonds come in a variety of shapes, conduct heat rapidly and are very rigid and stable. All of those features could make them useful when building so-called "nano-technology" machines, or in the production of heat-resistant coatings.

In drugs research, the diamonds could be useful in making treatments work better in the human body.

ChevronTexaco's research has sparked huge excitement among material scientists and chemists who have been working on extracting the diamonds for many years. Oil companies have a long-standing interest in removing the diamonds since they contribute to clogging in pipes and so lead to considerable extra cleaning costs.