DIAMOND PAGE — Fall drilling under way at Jericho

Partners Lytton Minerals (LTL-T) and New Indigo Resources (NDR-A) have begun limited reconnaissance drilling in the central area of the Jericho property in the Northwest Territories.

The property comprises 1.2 million acres and is centred on the JD-01 and JD-03 diamondiferous kimberlite pipes. JD-01 is land-based and contains about 6.1 million tonnes at an average grade of 0.94 carat per tonne, based on a cutoff size of plus 1 mm. The average value of the diamonds is US$60 per carat, or US$56.40 per tonne.

A prefeasibility study determined a resource, minable by open-pit methods, of 3.83 million tonnes grading 1.01 carats per tonne. The stripping ratio is 4.2-to-1.

The JD-03 pipe was discovered in the fall of 1996 under a small lake, 7 km west of JD-01. Delineation drilling suggests the pipe contains 10.5 million tonnes to a depth of 350 metres. An initial 10.53-tonne mini-bulk drill sample yielded a 7.34-carat parcel of stones, for a preliminary grade of 0.697 carat per tonne. A further 30 tonnes of material were collected from JD-03 last spring for treatment in Lytton’s dense-media-separation plant in North Vancouver. Results are pending.