Diamonds North tests Beluga-3

At a cost of around $1.5 million, Diamonds North’s (DDN-V) summer exploration program at its flagship Amaruk property, in Nunavut, wasn’t an extensive one. But even so, the work, which largely consisted of a 25-tonne bulk sample from its Beluga-3 kimberlite, could prove telling.

Beluga-3 is one of 25 kimberlites discovered so far at Amaruk, located in the Pelly Bay district. While 90% of the kimberlites are diamondiferous, none of them has yet proven to have economic potential.

“We’ve had some high diamond counts in the past, but we haven’t seen the coarse commercial sizes,” says Diamonds North president and CEO Mark Kolebaba.

A 2009 sample from Beluga-3, however, showed promise on that count. The 6.7-tonne sample, taken by reverse-circulation drilling, returned 126 diamonds larger than the 0.5-mm sieve size, including one broken stone on the 1.7-mm mesh.

Kolebaba says that larger stone, if reconstructed, would have been around 0.25 carats.

“That was the first sign of a larger stone that we’ve seen and it gave us the confidence to say ‘well, we’d better go back in and take a 25-tonne sample out of this.”

A good proportion of the stones in that sample were white, clear octahedrons.

Beluga-3 is located in a cluster of its own, away from the other kimberlites found on the property. It’s also got a different geophysical signature, says Kolebaba, describing it as “far more subtle magnetically.”

The kimberlite is at least one hectare, the company says.

At presstime, the Beluga-3 bulk sample was being processed by dense media separation, with results due out in November.

“If we get the right results, we could be out drilling as early as March,” Kolebaba says.

The company says that a high priority garnet population observed in till samples from the Beluga-3 area didn’t show up in the Beluga-3 kimberlite. To locate the source, Diamonds North is investigating the possibility that they’re from an untested phase of Beluga-3, as well planning further exploration drilling in the area.

The property contains hundreds of untested anomalies, as well as numerous unresolved kimberlite indicator mineral trains.

If the Beluga-3 bulk sample delivers “a nice distribution of coarse stones,” the goal will be to drill 50-80 targets a season in the hope of generating a new family of kimberlites in that region, Kolebaba says.

That would take money, which Kolebaba says is more available for bulk samples than earlier-stage work.

“If we can show that we’ve got larger stones, (raising money) will become a lot easier for us, and for things like gold, it’s always easy in these markets.”

While diamonds have always been the primary focus for Diamonds North, the junior also did some prospecting for gold this summer, both at its flagship property and at its Halkett Inlet project north of Amaruk. The goal is to find high-grade targets to drill next year. If those results are impressive, they can be used to entice potential JV partners.

The approach has already worked for Diamonds North when it comes to nickel. It spent $1 million to drill the Tunerq nickel target in 2008 and came up with some interesting intercepts, including 35 metres of 1% nickel.

“That gave us a lot of strength to go out and talk to potential joint-venture partners,” Kolebaba says. “It put us on the radar screen.”

It was enough to interest Minerals and Metals Group (MMG), a private Chinese-owned company. As part of an earn-in agreement for the nickel and other base metals at Amaruk, MMG spent more than $2 million on nickel exploration at the property this year. Diamonds North expects to have results from that program before the end of the year.