THE DIAMOND and specialty minerals stocks box score for Thursday was a mediocre 63-67-125. The TSX Venture Exchange gained four points to 834 while polished diamond prices were flat. Craig Scherba’s Energizer Resources Inc. (EGZ) closed unchanged at seven cents on 2.05 million shares. The company reported Wednesday that Albert Thiess, a director for the past five years, has died.
Andre Audet’s Majescor Resources Inc. (MJX), down one cent to 8.5 cents on 108,000 shares, has sold 6.55 million shares at 10 cents. The company set out in mid-February to raise $1-million but fell well short of the target. The cash, says Mr. Audet, interim chief executive officer, is for exploration and working capital. The company was one of the first junior explorers to focus on Quebec diamonds but after years of failure it moved on, first to Brazilian gems and then back to Quebec, but for gold.
Lately, Majescor has been renewing its enthusiasm for Quebec diamonds. Last fall, the company welcomed back Jacques Letendre to its ranks. Mr. Letendre, a former De Beers geologist, had been a Majescor director through most of the 2000s and the company’s president in the early 2000s when it was most active with its diamond hunts in the Wemindji and Otish Mountains regions of Quebec. Indeed, just days after Mr. Letendre’s return to the company’s boardroom, Majescor acquired an option on 6,875 hectares of claims prospective for diamonds from Diagnos Inc. (ADK: $0.12). (To acquire the property, Majescor agreed to pay $50,000 in cash and 2.5 million shares, and to spend $300,000 on exploration over two years.)
In January, Majescor “map staked” — no grizzled old prospectors banging stakes into frozen ground required in Quebec — nearly 5,000 hectares of ground in three areas: Mirabelli, Laparre and Nottaway. About half the new ground is at Mirabelli and is considered favourable for gold. (A few weeks later, the company added another 6,120 hectares in the Mirabelli area, east of James Bay.) In fact, Majescor does not utter a peep about diamonds regarding Mirabelli, but in 2006, the company optioned a big block of ground in the area from De Beers, which had spent several million dollars seeking diamonds on the property.
Mr. Audet and Mr. Letendre believe the two other prospects are favourable for diamonds. The 461-hectare Laparre property is southeast of the Renard diamond mine in the Otish Mountains district. The company acquired the project based on “anomalous kimberlitic indicator minerals” found in till samples. Anomalous is geologese for “a few more than expected but not enough to get excited about,” so Majescor plans the suitably vague “ground follow-up” this year. Majescor also has a his tory in t he Laparre area. In 2003, it explored the area under a joint venture with the late Art Ettlinger’s Dunsmuir Ventures Ltd., although neither company had the financial wherewithal to accomplish much.
Majescor’s Nottaway project spans nearly 1,900 hectares about 100 kilometres west of Matagami, another area the company worked in the mid-2000s. Mr. Audet says its new ground covers the probable head of a poorly defined but “very anomalous” dispersal train of indicator minerals. The indicator counts ranged as high as 300 per sample and some of them suggested a nearby source. The company said it would review the old data and it proposed to cover the priority anomalies with ground geophysics, with “drilling later in 2017.” (Mr. Audet says that earlier work in the area produced some untested anomalies.)