RE: LWC article on stockwatch - comp savvyTo all:
Here is the article referred to by ganoo (See below+++).
Ganoo, just for you (and anybody else who would like to learn how to do this valuable function)...If you see an article of interest, use a technique called "copy and paste".
1. Take you mouse and with your cursor, highlite the article in question (or any portion thereof). The selected area should turn a dark blue (at least it does on my computer).
2. Then Click on the "Edit" function in your Tool Bar.
3. Select the "copy" option.
4. At this point Either "Minimize" the site on which the article is based OR "close" that window completely.
5. Take your cursor and click the spot in this response area where we are typing our messages.
6. Then go to the "Edit" function in the Tool Bar and Select the "Paste" option. And Voila...the article that you selected with your cursor should appear here as mine did below.
Enjoy.
LB
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Leeward begins Ontario gem hunt
2004-11-05 14:02 ET - Street Wire
by Will Purcell
Jim Davis and Fred Lewicki's Leeward Capital Corp. is poking auger holes into targets on its Attawapiskat diamond property. The company picked up the project last year, but accomplished little on the Northern Ontario play. Still, the Attawapiskat region is producing encouraging news of late and De Beers Canada Corp. expects to turn its Victor pipe into Ontario's first diamond mine. As a result, Leeward's piece of the area play could prove promotable, although it will take a kimberlite find, or at least some hopeful signs of an imminent discovery, before investors hop aboard a Leeward bandwagon.
The property
Leeward made its diamond move early in 2003, when Mr. Davis's consulting company staked 36 claims across the Attawapiskat region. The property covers about 6,080 hectares of ground scattered across an area stretching about 100 kilometres from north to south, and roughly 60 kilometres form east to west.
Leeward did some homework before it staked the ground. The company selected potential kimberlite targets from air photos and a geomorphic analysis of the Attawapiskat area. The work produced an abundance of structures and other features that Leeward believes could be kimberlites.
The Leeward targets are southeast of a series of kimberlites that De Beers discovered during the late 1980s. Spider Resources Inc. added a few finds in the early 1990s and discovered a few more bodies this year. As well, Chuck Fipke's Metalex Ventures Ltd. has found signs of promise in the region.
That added to the promotability of the region, but Leeward did little work on its Attawapiskat property through 2003. The company has had a somewhat more active 2004, completing over $200,000 in exploration by the start of summer. Leeward spent a good portion of that cash on a ground gravity survey of its claims during the spring.
Leeward is now testing several of its gravity targets with an auger drill. The features appear comparable with what a kimberlite would produce, but the auger program is primarily designed to provide till samples, not a lengthy kimberlite intersection. Still, the company could encounter weathered kimberlite lying close to the surface. That could add a hint of sparkle to the story.
The Attawapiskat pedigree
De Beers discovered 18 kimberlites in the Attawapiskat region during the late 1980s and 16 of the finds are diamondiferous. The play seemed a lacklustre one at first, although there was the usual array of rumours suggesting that some of the bodies contained economically intriguing grades. Still, it took De Beers about a decade before it decided to attempt a mini-bulk test.
A 300-tonne sample in 1997 produced a grade of about one-third of a carat per tonne, with big variations across the multiphased kimberlite. The diamond giant mulled matters over for a few more years before it decided to attempt a big bulk test of the 15-hectare pipe.
As a result of that test, De Beers now believes the Victor pipe is worth mining. The company has a plan based on nearly 30 million tonnes of kimberlite, which will feed a 7,000-tonne-per-day mine for about a dozen years. The rock has an average grade of about 0.23 carat per tonne.
That value seems too low for the remote and challenging Attawapiskat region, but grade is just one factor in the equation. The value of the Victor diamonds more than compensates for the modest diamond content. De Beers estimates the Victor kimberlite has an average value of about $90 per tonne, and that figure requires a diamond value of nearly $300 (U.S.) per carat.
That value is far higher than the average diamond value at any of the other economic deposits in Canada. The gaudy appraisal is due to a favourable combination of Victor's diamond size distribution and the quality of the gems within the pipe. In particular, one of the kimberlite phases is believed to contain some particularly large blue-white diamonds.
De Beers will harvest just 600,000 carats from Victor yearly, but that should produce annual sales of about $225-million. With operating costs of just $100-million, the De Beers mine would be quite profitable, even with capital costs of over $800-million. As a result, Victor has been a key component in the promotional campaigns of several junior explorers in the Attawapiskat region.
De Beers has several other finds that it considered worthy of a closer look. The Tango Extension, Delta and India kimberlites produced interesting results and De Beers might collect mini-bulk tests from the bodies at some point. Once the company has a mine running at Victor, the economic threshold for future kimberlites would drop substantially.
The Spider group never collected larger samples of its MacFadyen kimberlites, which are near the northern end of the De Beers cluster. Nevertheless, the company also produced signs of a coarse diamond distribution during its limited tiny tests.
Nearly 165 kilograms of kimberlite form MacFadyen-1 produced a few micros and two macros, but the latter two diamonds weighed a promotable 0.065 carat. There was not much promise in the first sets of results from MacFadyen-2, but Spider has just come up with a diamond weighing nearly 0.08 carat from less than five kilograms of kimberlite. That latest sample came from a dike separate from the main kimberlite body.
The Attawapiskat encouragement
Most of the kimberlites were found well over a decade ago, but there is reason for optimism that several new bodies could be lurking in the district. Several juniors have properties in the region, and the more active explorers have been having success.
Spider drilled several new targets this year on its Attawapiskat play, and the company turned up a few new finds. The Good Friday kimberlite produced a toutable tally of diamonds, including one stone that was longer than one millimetre. Two other bodies delivered modest diamond counts. The company found enough encouragement that it plans more drilling into the kimberlites in its MacFadyen cluster.
Mr. Fipke is having a tougher time coming up with a big kimberlite find in the Attawapiskat region. Nevertheless, his exploration effort is producing mineral encouragement and kimberlitic material. Mr. Fipke and his partners have also been using an auger drill to sample the tills and overburden.
The focus of that program is over several intriguing targets along a swath of indicator minerals. The program produced arrays of indicator minerals with promising chemistry, along with kimberlitic clays and fragments of kimberlite. Metalex has found a few diamonds in its till and kimberlite samples, but Mr. Fipke is still looking for a diamondiferous bedrock source.
Metalex plans another round of auger and core drilling. Mr. Fipke is tracking the mineral promise farther up-ice, but the complex glacial pattern in the area is making the hunt a challenging one. The Metalex group has spent over $12-million on the Attawapiskat program so far, and that is an amount well above what little Leeward can muster. Nevertheless, a success by Mr. Fipke or Spider would give Leeward's modest play a promotable boost.
The players
The Calgary-based Mr. Davis became president of Leeward in 1988. The company subsequently took up diamond exploration during the heady days that followed Mr. Fipke's big find at Lac de Gras. The company caught the market's eye in 1993, when it discovered the Outlet Bay diatreme, near Dubawnt Lake in Nunavut. Interest in the company's gem project carried Leeward's shares from about a quarter in 2002, to a crest of $2.60 in the early summer of 1993.
Mr. Davis and Leeward's promotion came crashing back to earth after the company processed a considerable amount of material from the pipe, recovering just a single microdiamond. A 7.5-tonne test of the Outlet Bay kimberlite apparently failed to deliver a single macrodiamond. The company kept working on the Dubawnt play for a time. As well, it had diamond projects near Clinton-Colden Lake and Hidden Lake, on the fringes of the Lac de Gras region.
Mr. Davis and Leeward sparked a new surge of interest in 1996, but it took precious metal plays in Myanmar and Malaysia to carry Leeward's shares back to a $1.10 peak that year. The collapse in the price of gold and the resource sector in general put an end to interest in that story, and Leeward's shares traded for less than a nickel through most of the late 1990s.
The Calgary-based Mr. Lewicki became a director of Leeward in 1993, but he was a major shareholder of the company for a few years prior to that. Mr. Lewicki is the president of the Winnipeg-based Wilson Auto Electric Ltd., a private manufacturer of alternators and electrical components.
Mr. Lewicki is no stranger to Mr. Davis beyond the Leeward boardroom, as the two were directors of Fosters Resources Ltd. during the 1990s. Mr. Lewicki joined the board of Fosters in 1993, and he was a director of the company when it also took a brief fling at the diamond hunt in Canada's North. Little came of the Rawalpindi Lake project, but the story carried the company's shares to a $1.18 crest in the spring of 1994.
Leeward's third director also has a diamond past. Dr. Roger Morton joined the company's board in 1999, and he serves as a director of several other gem hunters. The Edmonton-based Dr. Morton was a professor at the University of Alberta and he is now the president of two private companies involved with the gem trade, Polar Star Diamonds Ltd. and Diamori Ltd.
Leeward could use some promotable news from its Attawapiskat play. The stock slid a penny on Thursday, closing at 20 cents.