Prime Equities targets Peace River

Promoter Murray Pezim’s Prime Equities International (VSE) is making a splashy entrance into the diamond exploration business by applying for mineral prospecting permits covering about 4.1 million acres in northern Alberta’s Peace River district.

The region is already being explored by several diamond exploration companies, including Monopros (De Beers), which is actively exploring a 1.5 million-acre tract south of the Prime lands.

Prime Equities said the geological setting of its land package combines diamond fertility with deep fault structures, and provides suitable conditions for lamproitic and kimberlitic magmas which would trap any existing diamonds.

The potential kimberlitic and/or lamproitic intrusives are thought to be Cretaceous in age (comparable to those reported from Saskatchewan) and close to the current bedrock surface where any crater and diatreme facies should have been preserved.

“It is this potential in Alberta that provides a more lucrative target than those currently being discovered in the Northwest Territories,” the company noted in a news release. “The latter are most likely preserved only to the roots and low diatreme facies, the remainder having been eroded.” The costs of staking and holding land packages in Alberta are also considerably lower than in the Northwest Territories.

Other Pezim-controlled companies have also joined the diamond hunt in Alberta and the Northwest Territories.

In the Peace River area, Golden Ring Resources (VSE) has applied for a prospecting permit covering 1.29 million acres.

In the Northwest Territories, Golden Ring has been granted an option to acquire a 75% interest in about 125,000 acres near Lac de Gras, N.W.T., in exchange for 65 cents per acre, 200,000 shares and a minimum work program. Under an identical agreement, Pacific Century Explorations (VSE) has optioned a separate 125,000-acre land package.

Nearby, Golden Dividend Resources (VSE) is preparing an agreement to acquire the Panther property, where a small circular magnetic low typical of a kimberlite pipe signature has been identified.