Even the biggies make bad investment!
In another train of thoughts;
New Nadina Explorations Ltd
Symbol NNA
Shares Issued 26,216,428
Close 2008-01-16 C$ 0.13
Recent Sedar Documents
New Nadina to set new drill plan
2008-01-17 20:41 ET - Street Wire
by Will Purcell
New Nadina Explorations Ltd. expects to focus a busy 2008 exploration program on finding new kimberlites on the Monument property, along the southern shore of Lac de Gras in the Northwest Territories. The company has been testing a series of small but significantly diamondiferous kimberlite bodies on the project for the past few years, but New Nadina's head, Ellen Clements, thinks it will take some larger and richer discoveries to make the project economic.
The plan
Ms. Clements said that New Nadina, which owns a 57.49-per-cent interest in Monument, would be meeting with its partners shortly to lay out their exploration plans. New Nadina's partners include Dr. Chris Jennings, who bought a 22.11-per-cent interest from SouthernEra Diamonds Inc., and Dr. Stu Blusson's Archon Minerals Ltd., which holds the remaining 20.4 per cent.
Ms. Clements said that the partners were still waiting for the diamond counts from two more batches of kimberlite taken from the RIP body, but she was not expecting a major surprise. "We need something that will carry the whole show," she said, adding that the size of the existing finds and the diamond results they produced were likely insufficient to support the project on their own.
As a result, New Nadina will be proposing a busy drill program designed to test as many new targets as possible. The number of potential candidates is uncertain, but it appears considerable, with estimates of as many as 40 features deserving a closer look. So far, the partners have had no success with their drilling of untested targets.
New Nadina started work at Monument in early March last year and Ms. Clements said the company would prefer to wait a week or two longer before starting this year. She expected that a late March start would still allow the partners at least six weeks to accomplish their spring drilling. New Nadina proposes further drilling in summer and possibly fall.
Money is usually a problem for New Nadina, which had less than $50,000 in working capital at the start of September, but Ms. Clements said the company would be completing another share sale to pay for its portion of the work. The partners will also be looking for ways to control their costs, such as using a smaller drill. Nevertheless, the total cost of the drilling is likely to top $1-million.
The encouragement
The first kimberlites on the property turned up in the early 1990s, and since then the bodies have been producing modest diamond tallies, but with several intriguing hints of a coarse size distribution curve. That combination suggests significantly larger tests are needed to determine the actual grade, and to provide even a rudimentary hint of the potential diamond value.
The latest bit of hope came from the RIP kimberlite, which produced a 0.445-carat gem in a 564-kilogram portion of rock. That clearly seemed a fluke, given the sample size and the lack of any other large stones, but the gem proves the Monument kimberlites contain larger stones.
So far, the partners have tested about 3.7 tonnes of kimberlite from all the small bodies, recovering 1,648 stones larger than a 0.106-millimetre sieve. Over 20 per cent of those diamonds also sat on a 0.30-millimetre screen, pointing to a potentially coarse distribution profile.
Ten of the diamonds sat on a 1.18-millimetre mesh, including four that clung to a 1.70-millimetre sieve and of those, two sat on the 2.36-millimetre screen. Those recoveries suggest the largest diamond, which sat on a 3.35-millimetre screen, was not a fluke. Nevertheless, New Nadina and its partners will be seeking larger kimberlites with greater numbers and sizes of diamonds.
New Nadina closed down a penny to 13 cents Wednesday on 70,000 shares.
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