Vancouver — Three of the four near-surface, sub-parallel kimberlite sills cut by De Beers Canada Exploration in the MZ Lake area have returned varying amounts of microdiamonds.
The major hit the sills earlier this year on the AK property in the Northwest Territories.
The company has been investigating the area ever since several kimberlite intervals of up to 2 metres thick were encountered beneath the lake and north and south of it.
This spring, De Beers completed five shallow, land-based holes, which were drilled vertically to depths of 50 metres along the periphery of the 4-km-long area.
The holes cut narrow intervals of kimberlite, ranging from 0.23 metre to 3.2 metres in thickness.
Another hole, about 1 km north of the lake and 1 km from the most easterly drilled hole, cut a 0.57-metre-thick interval of kimberlite at a depth of 24 metres.
Holes 71 and 75 from this year’s program, combined with last year’s hole 4, covered a 900-metre section of a single dyke sheet. Only one microdiamond was recovered from a total of 37 kg of sample.
Moving 1.4 km to the northwest, hole 73 returned an impressive 28 microdiamonds from a 5-kg sample. The largest stone measured 1 mm in at least one dimension.
The second-best hole, no. 70, was collared 1 km to the north in the dip direction of the main MZ Lake dyke sheet. It returned an encouraging nine stones from a 4-kg sample. Additional drilling is required to determine the extent and thickness of the sills.
The AK-CJ properties include the Kennady Lake project. They are held 51% by De Beers, 44.1% by
De Beers can increase its interest to 60% by advancing the project to commercial production.
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