Vancouver — The first three holes of a planned five-hole drilling campaign have cut wide zones of kimberlite from the newly discovered Knife pipe, 80 km south of Coronation Bay in Nunavut.
De Beers Canada Exploration can earn a 70% interest in the 10-sq.-km property from Rhonda (RDM-V) by spending $10 million on exploration over six years. Last fall, representative core samples from three drill holes yielded nine macrodiamonds and 208 microdiamonds from 397 kg of kimberlite. One 20-kg sample returned 54 stones weighing 0.04748 carat from a 6-metre interval.
The first hole in the current program was aimed at delineating the size and internal structure of the body and providing more information on diamond content. It was drilled to the west at a 60 angle and cut 222 metres of kimberlite below 9 metres of water and overburden.
Collared from the same drill pad, but drilled vertically, the second hole bottomed in kimberlite at 264 metres.
The third hole was also drilled from the same site, but angled at 60 to the east. It returned 217 metres of kimberlite below 9 metres of overburden.
Located 270 km north of the Ekati diamond mine, the Knife pipe has a drill-confirmed east-west dimension of 230 metres. There is geophysical evidence that the north-south extent is even greater.
De Beers Exploration Canada, formerly known as Monopros, is a subsidiary of De Beers Consolidated Mines (DBRSY-Q) of South Africa.
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