The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2019 – Published Nov. 1, 2019
An overview of Gahcho Kué, where drilling discovered a new kimberlite within 200 meters of an area slated for mining.
Winter drilling carried out at Kennady North early in 2019 was hindered by flight-restrictive weather in the Gahcho Kué area.
Since achieving commercial production at the Gahcho Kué Mine in 2017, Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. has resumed exploring for more diamonds across the wider property and Kennedy North, an adjacent property the company acquired full ownership of through its purchase of Kennady Diamonds Inc. in 2018.
In June, Mountain Province announced the discovery of a new kimberlite roughly 200 meters east of the planned open pit mining area for the Tuzo kimberlite on the Gahcho Kué property, which is co-owned by Mountain Province (49 percent) and De Beers Canada (51 percent).
This is the first kimberlite discovered on Gahcho Kué joint venture property in more than two decades.
"The discovery of Wilson demonstrates the high exploration potential of the Gahcho Kué JV area, and after a 20-year discovery hiatus, it confirms that we are on track for discovering new kimberlites in this region," said Mountain Province Diamonds President and CEO Stuart Brown.
The Wilson kimberlite was discovered while testing geophysical and historical drill anomalies in the area surrounding the Gahcho Kué kimberlites.
The discovery hole, MPV-19-496C, cut roughly 174 meters of kimberlite from a depth of 152 meters.
The initial 18 holes drilled at Wilson show no connection to nearby Tuzo.
After logging of the discovery hole, 115.2 kilograms of kimberlite was sent to a lab for microdiamond analysis. A total of 480 diamonds larger than 0.075 millimeters were recovered. The largest stone being a 0.28 carat colorless octahedral aggregate.
While there is not yet enough data to define a mineral resource, Mountain province estimates a potential range from 1.5 million to 3 million metric tons of kimberlite is possible for Wilson.
"With this important discovery, what would have formerly been discarded as waste rock has, through methodical exploration, now been converted to rock of value as we move forward with development of the Tuzo open pit," said Mountain Province Diamonds Vice President of Exploration Tom McCandless.
The Mountain Province team said this find within the mine area provides further impetus to explore for more discoveries in the corridor between the Gahcho Kué Mine and Kennady North property, which hosts three kimberlites with delineated resources – Kelvin, Faraday 1-3 and Faraday 2.
Kelvin hosts 8.5 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 1.6 carats per metric ton (13.62 million carats) of diamonds; the Faraday 1-3 kimberlite hosts 1.87 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 1.01 c/t (1.9 million carats) of diamonds; and Faraday 2 hosts 2.07 million metric tons of inferred resources averaging 2.64 carats per metric ton (5.45 million carats) of diamonds.
Exploration carried out at Kennady North winter months early in 2019 had two objectives – remove heavy equipment from previous bulk sampling programs and drill exploration targets 3,000 to 4,000 meters southwest of the Gahcho Kué Mine.
The first objective was met but drilling of priority kimberlite targets was hindered by flight-restrictive weather. As such, less than half of the 2,000-meter program was completed and no kimberlite was intersected.
Mountain Province said the untested targets will be reviewed for discovery potential and reprioritized along with other targets in the Kelvin-Faraday Corridor northeast of Gahcho Kué.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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