Stornoway Makes New Kimberlite Find
July 30, 09
Stornoway Diamond Corporation, a Canadian diamond exploration company, reported on Thursday the discovery of a new kimberlite in the Coronation Gulf/North Slave Diamond District of Nunavut.
The Hammer kimberlite was discovered by prospecting on a mineral claim acquired by the company last October 2008 at the head of a previously unexplained kimberlitic indicator mineral anomaly with diamond inclusion chemistry.
The Hammer Property is a joint venture between Stornoway (75% and operator) and North Arrow Minerals Inc. (25%).
According to President and CEO Matt Manson, the company believes that additional kimberlites remain to be discovered at Hammer and its adjacent properties.
Samples from the site are currently in transit south, although permafrost conditions and equipment constraints prevented the collection of a large sample of fresh kimberlite for representative microdiamond analysis.
The discovery joins 17 kimberlites previously known to exist in the general Coronation Gulf/North Slave Diamond District. Stornoway holds variable interests in ten of them. The diamond contents of individual bodies range from barren to highly diamondiferous, the company reported.
Within the diamondiferous kimberlites, grades range from less than 10 carats per hundred tons (cpht) to 10-30 cpht, with portions of the Anuri pipe reportedly reaching 78 cpht.
De Beers and Rio Tinto ran large tonnage sampling programs at the Knife and Anuri kimberlites respectively.