Stornoway comes up with diamonds (January 17, 2005)

Stornoway Diamond (SWY-T), BHP Billiton Diamonds (BHP-N) and Hunter Exploration Group have discovered diamonds in all five of the kimberlites they sampled in 2004. The pipes are on the Aviat property in Nunavut’s Melville Peninsula.

Highlights of the sampling program include: a 540-kg sample collected from boulders and drill core, containing 565 diamonds; a 48-kg sample (from surface float) containing 93 diamonds; a 17.6-kg sample containing four diamonds; a 9.5-kg sample containing six diamonds; and a 6.3-kg sample containing three diamonds. The largest diamond measured 2.2 by 2.1 by 1.8 mm.

Earlier results from a 10.4-tonne-sample of kimberlite (processed for diamonds greater than 0.85 mm) returned a grade of 0.83 carat per tonne.

To date, six kimberlites have been found within a 6-km portion of the 70-km-long-by-3-to-8 km-wide Tremblay corridor, which hosts more than 100 occurrences of kimberlitic boulders and numerous kimberlitic indicator mineral anomalies.

Drilling has focused on kimberlitic sub-crop, or boulder areas. Eight holes (totalling 1,142 metes) drilled this fall tested four targets; all cut from 0.1 to 61 metres of kimberlite.

Stornoway holds a 70% interest in the project, BHP Billiton owns 20%, and Hunter Exploration Group owns 10%.

Since this news was reported, shares in Stornoway have risen 14%, or 22. At presstime, they were trading at $1.82.