Regional Information:
The provinces of Oulun Lääni and Pohjois – Karjala Lääni have been of interest to the Company for a number of years. Oulun Lääni covers an area of 57,000 km² and Pohjois – Karjala Lääni, an area of 21,500 km². There are five municipalities in the principal area of interest to the Company, the main one being in the Kuhmo municipality.
Kuhmo is the largest population centre in this region, and houses one of Geological Survey of Finland’s (GTK) main Kimberlite Indicator mineral (KIM) laboratory facilities. The nearby city of Kajaani is served by excellent road (E63), rail and domestic air links.
Prospectivity:
The Company’s highly prospective area in the Kuhmo Claims Area covers over 7,000 km². The Company has been active in this area for a number of years and has identified the area as highly prospective.
This area hosts a series of previously discovered kimberlites, in particular in the Lentiira and Seitaperä areas, where they occur principally as dykes and/or expansions, blows and small pipes associated with major dykes or fissures found within a wide structural zone. Kimberlites in this area are considered to exhibit a similar geology and geochemistry to those found in the Russia at Arkhangelsk.
Work to Date:
Karelian Diamond Resources has been active in this area for a number of years and has identified the area as highly prospective. Under Conroy Diamonds and Gold, the Company identified numerous geophysical targets from the regional geophysical survey undertaken by the GTK. The Company has collected over 500 regional and detailed till samples in this region, many of which proved positive for KIM’s, including numerous G9 garnets and also G10 garnets indicative of high-diamond potential kimberlites. More recently, the GTK has also taken 249 till samples as part of a non-proprietary regional survey, which have been used to augment the Company’s results.
The Ashton/Malmikaivos Oy partnership previously discovered three kimberlite bodies: Seitäperä (#16), Havukkasuo (#18) and Lentiira (#24) in this area. Seitaperä is a diamond-bearing kimberlite with a recently revised (2007) surface area of circa 7 Ha, the largest kimberlite found to date in Finland, and has been licensed by the Company. A detailed re-evaluation of this kimberlite, including additional drilling and analysis of previously-drilled core is ongoing.
Elsewhere in the general area, the Company is well advanced in following up on several well-defined KIM trains towards their immediate source areas and has also undertaken ground magnetic surveying over localized targets associated with KIM trains at a higher resolution, to augment the existing 200 m line-spacing regional airborne survey.