Stornoway comes up with diamonds (December 14, 2004)

In 2004 Stornoway Diamond (SWY-T), BHP Billiton Diamonds (BHP-N) and Hunter Exploration Group have discovered diamonds in all five kimberlites that they sampled this year on the Aviat project, Melville Peninsula, Nunavut.

Highlights of the sampling program include:

• AV4 a 540 kg sample, collected from boulders and drill core, contained 565 diamonds;
• AV5 a 48-kg sample (from surface float) contained 93 diamonds;
• AV2 a 17.6 kg sample contained 4 diamonds;
• AV1A a 9.5-kg sample contained 6 diamonds, and
• AV3 6.3 kg contained 3 diamonds.

The largest diamond (recovered from kimberlite AV4) measured 2.2 mm by 2.1 mm by 1.8 mm.

Earlier results from a 10.4-tonne-sample of kimberlite from AV-1 (processed for diamonds greater than 0.85 mm) returned a grade of 0.83 carat per tonne.

To date, six kimberlites have been found within a six-km portion of the 70-km-long and 3-8 km-wide Tremblay corridor that hosts over 100 occurrences of kimberlitic boulders and numerous kimberlitic indicator mineral anomalies.

Drilling has focussed on kimberlitic subcrop, or boulder areas. Eight holes (totalling 1,142 metes) drilled this fall tested four targets and all cut from 0.1-61 metres of kimberlite.

Stornoway holds a 70% interest in the project, BHP Billiton owns 20% and Hunter Exploration group owns 10%.