by Will Purcell

New Nadina Explorations Ltd. plans a busy winter drilling new targets on its Monument project in the Northwest Territories, after the company found its largest diamond yet along its String of Blue Pearls kimberlite cluster. The series of small kimberlite bodies along the southern shore of Lac de Gras continues to yield moderate diamond counts with a coarse size distribution curve, suggesting a potentially intriguing grade. The company will need larger tests to prove or kill the existing bodies, but first, New Nadina plans to expand the tonnage potential of the project by testing new features.
The plan

President Ellen Clements said that she wanted the company to have an even balance between new exploration and more testing of the existing pipes. "We need one pipe to carry the rest and we do not have that yet," she said, adding that a winter drill program now being planned could quickly fill the need.

The Greenwood-based Ms. Clements said that New Nadina had a lot of targets available to test on the Monument play. Some of the features lie just north of the String of Blue Pearls, while a line of anomalies immediately south suggests that a second string of kimberlites may exist on the property.

New Nadina completed drilling on some of the existing finds this year, notably RIP and DD-17, and the company left the rig on the property when the work wrapped up. As a result, it will just have to secure a crew by mid-March to test the new features in what will likely be a six-week program. Ms. Clements said the work would likely cost at least $1-million.

The company will also have to sell more shares to pay for the program, as it had about $500,000 in working capital at the end of May and most of that went to the summer program at Monument. As well, New Nadina and its Monument partners are likely to try bigger tests of the best pipes next summer, and they will have to make applications for permits and secure the needed equipment before the end of the year.

The encouragement

In a press release Nov. 22, New Nadina touted its largest Monument gem yet, a 0.445-carat gem recovered from the RIP kimberlite. That stone would seem a fluke for that particular batch of rock, as the second largest stone likely weighed about 0.03 carat or less, but taken as a whole, the big rock fits well within the cumulative parcel of stones from the String of Blue Pearls kimberlites.

New Nadina and its partners, which include two of Canada's gem hunting pioneers, Dr. Chris Jennings and Dr. Stu Blusson, have so far tested about 3.68 tonnes of kimberlite from several of the Monument bodies, most of it from DD-17 and RIP. That rock produced 1,648 diamonds larger than a 0.106-millimetre sieve, or about 450 stones per tonne. About 21 per cent of the diamonds are large enough to sit on a 0.30-millimetre sieve, suggesting the small pipes have a coarse size distribution curve.

The cumulative parcel contains 23 stones larger than a 0.85-millimetre cut-off and 10 of them also sat on a 1.18-millimetre sieve. Four of the diamonds clung to a 1.70-millimetre screen, including one that also sat on a 2.36-millimetre sieve and another that remained on a 3.35-millimetre mesh. Those numbers suggest the latest find, the 3.35-millimetre gem, was not necessarily the result of unusual good fortune.

The probable weights of the 23 largest stones suggests a diamond content of one-quarter carat per tonne, but the partners believe the result could improve significantly with bigger tests. In fact, Dr. Jennings bought his stake in the play based on an expectation of potential grades between one-half and one carat per tonne.

New Nadina closed up two cents to 16.5 cents Thursday on 39,000 shares.