Drilling resumes on Star kimberlite

Vancouver — Shore Gold (SGF-V) has kicked off this year’s drill program on its wholly owned Star kimberlite, 60 km east of Prince Albert, Sask.

The Star property is located at the southern end of the Fort la Corne kimberlite field, which extends over a 45 km and contains some 70 kimberlite bodies. These are in the form of stacked lenses, composed predominantly of pyroclastic crater-facies and covered by as much as 125 metres of unconsolidated glacial overburden.

Shore Gold intends to further define the thickness, geometry and consistency of diamond content within the Star kimberlite. A minimum of seven holes will be drilled. The data will be used to increase the confidence level for preliminary economic analysis, as well as to determine the best location for the planned bulk-sample program.

The kimberlite has been defined over 4 km where the kimberlite has a minimum thickness of 30 metres. Shore reports that preliminary estimates of the volume of diamond-bearing kimberlite exceed 400 million tonnes, based on geophysical modelling and drill hole intercepts.

The kimberlite was discovered by Shore in 1996 though the drill-testing of magnetic geophysical anomalies generated from an airborne and follow-up ground magnetic survey. Diamond analyses from 2245.4 kg of core returned 523 diamonds, including 120 macros weighing 0.621 carat, for an average grade of 27.8 carats per 100 tonnes.