More Pikoo ShenanigansGeoff Balderson's Strike Graphite Corp. (SRK: $0.05) will proceed alone with its Sask Craton diamond play near Pikoo in Northern Saskatchewan. Mr. Balderson says Strike and Ryan Kalt's Athabasca Nuclear Corp. (ASC: $0.02) have called off their proposed friendly merger. It is unclear what happened to the deal, which was laid out in mid-July and approved by Strike's shareholders a few weeks ago, but the move left Strike in a tight spot. A condition of the merger was that Strike call off a $1-million private placement, as the sale of 20 million shares at five cents would have more than doubled Strike's share tally, materially altering the ownership of the merged company. The end of the merger leaves Strike with a working capital deficiency, even after it converted $562,000 in debt into five-cent shares. This week Strike renegotiated a three-month extension for a $140,000 payment pertaining to its Sask Craton acquisition. Further payments of just over $400,000 follow over the next 15 months, as per the terms of the original deal. Mr. Balderson, president and CEO, touts Strike as being "ahead of the herd," but with Saskatchewan diamonds at least, his rivals were already chewing their Pikoo cud by the time Strike acquired Sask Craton. He loves to call his 520,000-hectare property "adjacent" to the core Pikoo property where North Arrow Minerals Inc. (NAR: $0.52) found a small but rich diamond deposit at PK-150 a year ago. It is, if an adjoining three-kilometre sliver of a 240-kilometre perimeter can be deemed to be adjacent. (Nearly all the Sask Craton ground lies more than 20 kilometres from PK-150.)