Drilling planned for Whitefish Lake property

Vancouver — Encouraged by northern Ontario’s diamond potential, Kennecott Canada Exploration has initiated diamond drilling at the Whitefish Lake and KAP properties, near Wawa.

The program is testing several high-resolution helicopter magnetic anomalies, along with anomalies identified by ground geophysics.

Kennecott, a division of London-based Rio Tinto (rtp-n), can earn a 60% stake in the Whitefish Lake, KAP and Rocky Island Lake properties from partners Canabrava Diamond (cnb-v) and Paramount Ventures & Finance (pvf-v). To do so, it must spend $25 million on exploration over seven years, or advance one of the projects to production.

At Whitefish Lake, which is fully owned by Canabrava (the other two projects are shared equally by Canabrava and Paramount), two kimberlite dykes have been identified, as have been kimberlite float-boulders and indicator minerals. One of the dykes was tested by limited drilling but failed to return any diamonds.

Numerous indicator minerals in alluvium and glacial till have been discovered on both the KAP and Rocky Island Lake properties. Also, many nearby ultramafic bodies remain untested.