from stockwatch 2019-02-28 17:47 PT - Market Summary
by Will Purcell
Dermot Desmond and Stuart Brown's Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (MPVD), up three cents to $1.38 on 212,000 shares, will complete more drilling this year at its Kennady Lake diamond project, just northeast of Gahcho Kue in the Northwest Territories. The company is planning 2,000 metres of drilling to test a series of new targets, identified through a detailed data compilation program last year. The company, which married its own data with information obtained from GGL Resources Corp. (GGL $0.08) four years ago, says that the resulting product was a glacial till ranking scheme that could be combined with geophysical data to generate targets -- which it presumably did.
Dr. Tom McCandless, vice-president of exploration, says that he is pleased to have this consolidated database, which he believes will "provide the basis for all future work" on the company's wholly-owned properties near the Gahcho Kue mine. He is referring to the 67,000 hectares of ground loosely described as the Kennady North project, covering the main Kelvin and Faraday pipes to the northeast of Gahcho Kue, and also the ground northwest, west and southwest of the mine.
(The "wholly-owned" qualifier is not a good thing: Mountain Province paid dearly when it reacquired the project in 2018, expanding its shares outstanding by about one-third as a result of the acquisition. The company hopes to entice De Beers into adding the Kelvin and Faraday pipes to the Gahcho Kue mine plan, but first, De Beers will have to acquire a 51-per-cent interest in Kennady North from Mountain Province and De Beers is unlikely to make a generous offer to its co-venturer.)
Mountain Province also has new diamond counts to cheer, thanks to drilling last year at Faraday 2. About 2.1 tonnes of kimberlite produced 9,218 diamonds larger than a 0.106-millimetre sieve. Of those, 267 were larger than a 0.85-millimetre sieve. Those larger gems weighed 10.4 carats, suggesting a grade of 4.95 carats per tonne. Mr. McCandless did not say how big the largest stones were, but four of them sat on a 3.35-millimetre screen. Such a stone would typically weigh in excess of one-half carat.
Mr. Brown, president and chief executive officer, says that these microdiamond results, which come from the northwestern extension of Faraday-2, are "excellent but not unexpected," since kimberlites within the Kelvin-Faraday corridor exhibit a remarkable consistency of grade across internal lithologies. He says that early indications suggest that this area will contribute substantially to the value of this resource within the company's Kennady portfolio.
At last report, Mountain Province listed Kelvin with 8.5 million tonnes indicated at 1.6 carats per tonne, or 13.62 million carats, and Faraday at 3.27 million tonnes inferred at 1.54 carats per tonne, for an additional five million carats. Those diamonds could come in handy at Gahcho Kue, especially during the last stages of its projected 12-year life, but only if they carry at least a comparable value with those at the nearby mine. For now, it appears, De Beers is in no rush to do a deal with Mountain Province.