Sudbury Contact drilling for kimberlites on Panthco

Toronto-based Sudbury Contact Mines (CDN) is currently drilling on ground held by Panthco Resources (CDN) as part of an exploration drive to find more kimberlite pipes around Kirkland Lake, Ont.

In order to earn a 60% interest in the 51-claim property that straddles Gauthier and McVittie twps., Sudbury has agreed to make cash payments totalling $110,000 and spend $500,000 on exploration before June, 1995. The Panthco property lies just north of the 5-acre Diamond Lake pipe in McVittie Twp., where Sudbury Contact recently recovered 14 microdiamonds from core weighing about half a ton.

Although all the diamonds found in the Diamond Lake pipe are less than 0.45 mm in diameter, a few of them are actually chips off larger stones of up to one carat that were broken during crushing, geologist Peter Hubacheck told shareholders at Sudbury Contact’s recent annual meeting.

But the fact that six of the tiny diamonds are gem quality is insignificant, says Christopher Jennings, an expert in diamond exploration and evaluation, because regardless of their commercial value, diamondiferous pipes tend to carry a lot of gem-quality microdiamonds.

Jennings is president of SouthernEra Resources (TSE), which is actively involved in the Northwest Territories diamond play.

Since announcing the discovery, Sudbury Contact has completed two of eight holes designed to follow up results of last year’s drilling, geophysical surveys and geological mapping on the Panthco property.

One of the recent holes intersected trachyte, a volcanic rock whose magnetic signature can be similar to that of kimberlite, Hubacheck told The Northern Miner after the meeting.

Financed by affiliate Agnico-Eagle Mines (TSE), Sudbury will complete airborne and ground geophysics over 40,000 acres of claims and test several blind targets along a magnetic trend stretching north from the Diamond Lake pipe. The company’s best target, Hubacheck said, is a coincident magnetic high/gravity low just west of the north-south trend which appears to have an area of about 20 acres.

Almost 100 diamonds up to 21 carats in weight have been recovered from glacial debris in the Great Lakes area since 1863. The source of these diamonds is thought to lie directly south of James Bay, perhaps in the Kirkland Lake camp, where eight diamond-bearing kimberlites have been found to date.