Star DIAM Mentioned (Mon, 31 Jan) - Summary by Will PurcellStar Diamond has several other intriguing kimberlites at FalCon, but there is no rush to check them out. Ewan Mason and Ken MacNeill's Star Diamond Corp. (DIAM) rose one-half cent to 36.5 cents on 326,000 shares. Star and Rio Tinto Exploration Canada Inc. (RTEC), its majority co-venturer at the FalCon project in central Saskatchewan, are proposing a mammoth diamond mine based on the Star and Orion South kimberlites, but the project contains dozens of other kimberlites that were at least cursorily examined over the past 30 years by Kensington Resources and De Beers Canada early on.
One cluster of those vents, now dubbed Orion North, has gotten recent attention, but Star has several other bodies for which it has calculated a target for future exploration -- a not-yet-a-resource resource estimate -- and a few others it deems to be bodies of interest. Of course, the company's long-faithful retail shareholders have an even longer list, or as one Internet wag opined: "Oh, and then there are the other 80 pipes of which several contain at least as many diamonds as [Star and Orion South.]" Unfortunately, that summation appears the product of overexuberance and undersampling in years gone by.
Another cluster, pipes No. 118, 122 and 150, now called Taurus by Star Diamond, supports a target for further exploration delineated by the company in 2014. That calculation pegged the complex with between 370 million and 434 million tonnes of kimberlite containing between 21.3 million and 28.9 million carats -- a tally not far off that of either Star or Orion South -- although Taurus's resulting grades, between 5.7 and 6.7 carats per hundred tonnes, are no match for either. If Taurus has a lesser magnitude than Orion North, which is in turn dimmer in the promotional night sky than the two main constellations at FalCon, then the other bodies mentioned favourably by Star Diamond back in 2014 are best viewed with some form of magnification to enhance their promotability.
One of those other clusters, Orion Centre, is of interest because it is wedged between Orion South and Orion North. Star Diamond credited it with between 163.6 million and 200.8 million tonnes of kimberlite, and while not enough testing had been done to imply even a range of grades, earlier work by De Beers and its partners suggested it had intriguing microdiamond grades and stone sizes. Accordingly, it warranted larger samples but the nearly 93 tonnes of kimberlite extracted delivered just 1.09 carats, barely one carat per hundred tonnes.
Still, given the statistical inaccuracies inherent in small samples and microdiamond work, further testing is likely in order at some point, given its proximity to the two other Orion clusters. Indeed, the De Beers testing alone suggested that Orion North was at least as favourable a target as Orion South. Unfortunately -- shockingly, perhaps, to anyone save a mathematician -- subsequent testing on a larger scale by Star Diamond did not bear out that enthusiasm. Even so, that statistical variability could easily work the other way with Orion Centre.
Three other unnamed clusters are of interest. The No. 221 and No. 121 pipes contain an estimated 53.6 million to 64 million tonnes of kimberlite, and the De Beers microdiamond work easily put them on par with the three Orion clusters and Taurus. About 66 tonnes of kimberlite extracted from the two pipes averaged just over four carats per hundred tonnes, enough to get a modeller's motor to fire up, but with a grade tune-up needed to keep it running.
The No. 123 and No. 223 pipes host an estimated 42.4 million to 50.5 million tonnes of kimberlite and again, work by De Beers and its partners revealed encouraging microdiamond grades and average stone sizes. Unfortunately, over 20 tonnes of material averaged barely one carat per hundred tonnes. Finally, the No. 152 pipe hosts between 27.6 million and 32 million tonnes of kimberlite, but it did not impress at the microdiamond stage.
While RTEC may well look at some of the lesser clusters at FalCon, there is no rush for it and Star Diamond to pursue additional feed for a mammoth -- but still hypothetical -- processing plant. Star Diamond's four-year-old preliminary economic assessment projected Star and Orion South with nearly 40 years of life, so the questions about the lesser sparklers on Orion's belt and Taurus, not to mention the unnamed clusters, may well be left to the children and grandchildren of today's geologists and promoters.