DIAMOND EXPLORATION – Aviat sample returns 162 cpht

NUNAVUT - STORNOWAY DIAMOND CORP. and its partner HUNTER EXPLORATION GROUP, both headquartered in Vancouver, say the latest sample from their Aviat project on the Melville Peninsula returned 162 cpht (carats per hundred tonnes). The 20.6-tonne sample was treated in a dense media separation (DMS) plant.

The sample was taken from the SV2 kimberlite, which the company interprets as an outcrop of the larger AV267 sheet. CEO Eira Thomas noted, "AV267 has returned the highest diamond recoveries and coarsest diamond distribution from Aviat to date. This result, combined with initial tonnage estimates from previous work, points to a large potential diamond resource."

AV267 is one of seven separate kimberlite sheets intersected over an area measuring about 1.5 by 3.5 km within the Eastern Sheet Complex, part of the Tremblay Corridor. These shallowly dipping (8 to 20 degrees) macrocrystic, hypabyssal kimberlite sheets with associated zones of kimberlite breccia are thought by Stornoway geologists to be part of a sequence of layered, horizontally stacked sheets separated by vertical distances of 10 to 30 metres. The company is investigating the hypothesis that the eastern kimberlites represent occurrences of a single system of stacked kimberlite sheets underlying the entire area. One such sheet alone would represent a substantial potential tonnage of diamondiferous material. Additional drilling is required to properly test this conceptual model.

Stornoway previously released news that the same sample yielded a 3.64-ct gem-quality stone during initial processing. A photo of that diamond is posted at www.StornowayDiamonds.com/av2_outcrop_3_003.jpg.

Elsewhere, at its Foxtrot project in north-central Quebec, Stornoway reports that a 31-tonne trench sample from the Hibou dike yielded 126 cpht. The Foxtrot property is a 50:50 joint venture of Stornoway and Quebec's SOQUEM INC.