Street Wire
by Will Purcell

New Nadina Explorations Ltd. would like to take a larger mini-bulk sample from its Monument property next spring, says its president, Ellen Clements. One of her partners, Dr. Stewart Blusson's Archon Minerals Ltd., seems certain the test will occur. The partners have yet another set of encouraging diamond counts from a series of small kimberlite pipes on the property. The stone tallies are modest but the size distribution patterns are pleasingly coarse, making larger samples necessary to get a reasonable indication of the Monument grades.

The plan

Ms. Clements said New Nadina, which holds a 57-per-cent interest in Monument and is operating the project, is applying for new permits. The existing permissions expire next September. She said the application was including the possibility of collecting a surface mini-bulk test from all of the land-based kimberlites on the property.

New Nadina has a road laid out and has its excavation contractor on standby for a spring start. Ms. Clements took over New Nadina and its project after her husband, George Stewart, died in 2005. Since then she has proven as tenacious as Mr. Stewart and is arguably having better success. New Nadina's Greenwood-based head says the only concern will be getting the permits in time.

Money is usually a bigger problem than bureaucracy for junior explorers, especially these days, but Ms. Clements says her company is still finding it easy to sell flow through shares to pay its share of the costs. Putting the best spin on a long, long bottom, New Nadina's shares did not endure the panicked free fall experienced by most of its rivals: The company's shares are at the same level as a year ago, while most of its peers have lost about 90 per cent of their market value.

Ms. Clements says the partners theoretically would like to spend $10-million on Monument next year, based on the results so far, but the difference between theory and practice is hard to exaggerate. Given the likely constraints, the real plan will be smaller, but the former bookkeeper added the partners would be spending at least a few million dollars next year.

The numbers and sizes of the mini-bulk tests will not be settled until next year, but the main costs of the program will be getting the equipment to the site and digging a ramp down to the kimberlite zones. As a result, expanding the size of a sample would cost little more. The only additional expenses would be transportation and processing charges for the kimberlite.

Further, there is an advantage to collecting one larger test, rather than going back each year for a series of smaller samples. Most man-made depressions larger than a size-12 footprint quickly fill up with water, and the partners would have to pump out the excavation area each year. That would incur added cost and likely annoy the environmentalists.

The encouragement

New Nadina and its partners now have diamond counts from nine kimberlites, and a total of 5.18 tonnes of kimberlite has so far yielded 56 diamonds larger than a 0.85-millimetre mesh. Those stones likely weigh about 1.7 carats, suggesting a sample grade of about one-third of a carat per tonne.

Ms. Clements's partners include Dr. Chris Jennings and his wife Jeanne, who have a 20-per-cent interest in the project. Dr. Jennings also thinks that larger samples are needed, as he expects the measured grades of the bodies will climb significantly with bigger tests because of the coarse stone size distribution. His optimistic target is handily above one-half carat per tonne and possibly close to one carat per tonne. The recovery of a 0.445-carat and a 0.19-carat diamond in the current small test supports his theory.

New Nadina closed unchanged Wednesday at 15 cents on 5,000 shares.