KIM Report

Churchill part 2

Posted by David

Now moving onto another Churchill, the Churchill craton, where Stornoway Diamonds and Shear Minerals have the Kahuna diamondiferous kimberlite, amongst others.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Kahuna body is a dyke. If we model the dyke as an ideal tabular body using the reported dimensions of 4 m width by 5000m strike, and assume a mining depth of 100m, this gives a mine-able volume of 2 million cubic meters.

Using the density of olivine (forsterite), a major constituent of kimberlite, as a proxy for kimberlite density at 3.27 tons per cubic meter, the above volume equates to approximately 6.54Mt.

The latest diamond grade reported from Kahuna in December was 0.95c/t. Thus this modeled body contains 6.213 million carats at a mining depth of 100m.

Unfortunately, no diamond valuation data for Kahuna has been released yet. The individual diamonds shown seem to be of fairly good size with no overall population distribution would indicate poor quality stones, such as the case at the Argyle mine, Australia. Also the possibility for large stones exists as a 5.43 c stone that was a fragment of an even larger stone (up to 14 c in possible size) was reported in November.

To give an idea of the value of the rock, (in USD$) at a low diamond value of $50/c, the diamonds contained in the modeled body would be worth over $310 million, at a better valuation of $100/c, the value would be double at over $610 million.

Note that Kahuna is but one of the properties in the Churchill project.

An earlier 2007 report read that the PST003 dyke gave a result of 2.04 c/t, and the Jigsaw and Notch bodies gave 0.39-0.8c/t.

So with the 2008 drilling season started it will be interesting to see if Shear and Stornoway can keep up the positive results that may help is pulling their stocks away from recent lows.

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