frank Letmebe, this may tell you more.....frank f
Diamondex Resources Ltd - Street Wire
Majescor and Diamondex team up in Quebec
Diamondex Resources Ltd DSP
Shares issued 27,939,289 Jul 3 2002 close $ 1.05
Thursday July 4 2002 Street Wire
See Majescor Resources Inc (MAJ) Street Wire
by Will Purcell
Diamondex Resources and Majescor Resources have agreed to explore a new diamond property in Northern Quebec, an area that is well to the north of the currently hot Otish Mountains region, but has nevertheless attracted a bit of attention of late. The arrangement brings together two long-time diamond hunters, Randy Turner and Jacques Letendre, each of whom can count an exploration success or two among the usual array of failures typical of the search for gems. It remains to be seen whether past successes will count for anything in the Lac Gayot region, about 400 kilometres to the north of the Renard discoveries of Ashton Mining of Canada.
Mr. Letendre and Andre Audet's Majescor is well known for its involvement in several Quebec diamond plays, while Mr. Turner's Diamondex has largely limited its focus to the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Nevertheless, it was actually Mr. Turner and Diamondex that got the jump in the Lac Gayot region. The company has apparently been poking around the Caniapiscau area for about four years, collecting a series of regional till samples that ultimately pointed toward the Lac Gayot region.
Meanwhile, Majescor took up the search in 2000, and the company collected its own till samples, also on a regional scale, but perhaps a bit more detailed than the Diamondex work. Majescor president, Mr. Letendre, said that its sampling work also led it to the Gayot area quite independently of Diamondex. Coincidentally, Mr. Turner and Mr. Letendre were talking about other matters at the time, and the deal followed a joint perusal of each other's data. The end result is an equal share in a property that could cover as much as 65,000 hectares.
"Their results coincided with ours," said Mr. Letendre, and that confirmation would seem to be a good sign. Not as encouraging is the fact that Ashton also holds ground in the region, although the company has apparently let a significant amount of its land position go. Ashton has been talking about the Caniapiscau region for years, but so far, little has come of it. Mr. Letendre said that Ashton rapidly dropped much of its large property, keeping a number of small, scattered blocks. "I don't understand their strategy," he added. Roughly half of the ground picked up by Majescor and Diamondex is believed to have been originally held by Ashton.
Ashton arrived in the region around the same time it started its Otish hunt. The company kept quiet about both plays until 2000, when it finally revealed its activity in the two regions. It was surface sampling that also led Ashton to the Caniapiscau area, as the company had come up with a number of promising G-10 pyrope garnets and picroilmenites. Diamondex and Majescor are not yet revealing what was found in their samples. Mr. Letendre did say that he knew that the indicator mineral assortment had come from kimberlites, but the partners still do not have enough data to assess the potential of any such kimberlites.
In addition to indicator minerals, Mr. Letendre holds out hope for the Gayot region due to its location on a structure that runs from Mistassini, through the Foxtrot and Portage projects in the Otish Mountains, northeastward through Ashton's Taiga project, and on to the Lac Gayot region. Mr. Letendre described the feature as a very important structure that corresponds with a gravity low. As a result, he believes that the fact that the indicator minerals are there is no coincidence. Perhaps signalling the shape of a future Majescor promotion, Mr. Letendre termed the structure another Corridor of Hope.
Mr. Letendre seems to be a big believer in structural zones. In the early 1990s, then working for De Beers, he sent his exploration crews off to Victoria Island in the pursuit of diamonds, as the area was at the northern extension of the original Corridor of Hope that extended through Lac de Gras and across the North Slave region, another currently hot area. Victoria Island did yield a number of diamondiferous kimberlite discoveries, but none of the finds proved to be particularly encouraging. Nevertheless, Mr. Letendre clings to his belief that the Victoria Island diamond play is for real.
Mr. Letendre's attraction to structural zones recently landed him in a bit of a mess, although he emerged unscathed. Last fall, he accepted a director's role with Lydia Diamond Exploration of Canada. Mr. Letendre was interested in Lydia's Wolf Lake diamond project in Southern Ontario, which lies along a structure that stretches from the Finger Lakes region of New York, to Lake Timiskaming, and northwestward. There have been a number of diamond discoveries along that feature, and Lydia's project has produced a few stones as well.
Mr. Letendre's stay in Lydia's boardroom did not last long however. Early in April, the Ontario Securities Commission commenced an action against Lydia and its principals, Jurgen von Anhalt, Emilia von Anhalt, along with Fran Harvie, who it described as a psychic. The key issue was apparently the illegal sale of Lydia shares, but the media had a great time over suggestions that Lydia had Ms. Harvie use psychic powers to dowse for diamonds, a charge that the directors of Lydia hotly deny.
By then, Mr. Letendre was long gone; having resigned the day after the story broke. "Once the scandal came up, no matter if there was any truth to it, I just could not afford to be there," he said, adding that he believed the Anhalts were initially naive with their geology, spending a lot of money getting bad advice from gold people. Nevertheless, Mr. Letendre still has hopes for Lydia's Wolf Lake property, which was originally a project that he hoped to pick up for Majescor. He said that there were favourable indicator minerals in the area, along with diamonds in the lamprophyre rock, but what truly fascinated him was the location of Wolf Lake on the structural zone.
Mr. Letendre had poked around the area near Lake Timiskaming with De Beers in the early 1980s, shortly after he joined the company. Just as others were beginning to join the hunt, he moved westward, where he scored a number of successes, undoubtedly using traditional approaches, rather than diamond dowsing. In 1987, Mr. Letendre made the first kimberlite find in Saskatchewan, which subsequently triggered the Fort a la Corne discovery. From there, he moved westward, coming up with the first find in Alberta as well.
Ironically, Mr. Letendre did no real diamond exploration in Quebec for De Beers before he called it quits with the company in 1994. In the mid-1990s, he took off for Guyana, where he managed the Dachine diamond exploration program for Golden Star Resources. That play produced impressive numbers of microdiamonds but a subsequent mini-bulk test produced an insignificant number of commercial diamonds. Mr. Letendre moved on to Majescor in the late 1990s, starting as vice-president and ultimately taking over as president from Mr. Audet, who had been a broker with Nesbitt Burns for about 15 years before he sold his book and joined Majescor.
Meanwhile, the deal with Majescor is Mr. Turner's first real foray outside Canada's North in several years. Since the early 1990s, first with Winspear and later with Diamondex, Mr. Turner was preoccupied with the area surrounding the Snap Lake kimberlite dike system. As the head of Winspear, the tenacious Mr. Turner first turned Snap Lake into Swiss cheese, searching for a kimberlite pipe that would account for an impressive indicator mineral train running westward from the lake.
When that drill program failed to come up with much more than a few dike intersections, Mr. Turner directed his attention toward the dike itself. Pipe fever had carried Winspear's shares to a high of more than $4 late in 1996, but most speculators were comparatively unimpressed with Mr. Turner's pursuit of the dike. Also unimpressed was Winspear's partner, Aber Diamond Corporation, which declined to pay its share of a mini-bulk test of the dike. The lack of enthusiasm took its toll on Winspear's stock, and a share could be had for just 43 cents in the spring of 1998. Nevertheless, Mr. Turner doggedly kept at his dike project. The mini-bulk test and a subsequent bulk sample were resounding successes, and additional drilling continued to expand the resource. By the summer of 2000, although the market was still reluctant to buy into the Winspear promotion, De Beers was not. The diamond giant launched a hostile bid for Winspear, and the company was ultimately successful, acquiring Winspear for $5 a share.
The buyout by De Beers did not end Mr. Turner's pursuit of Snap Lake however. In 1999, Winspear had transferred all of its lesser properties to a new company, Diamondex, and one of those afterthoughts was the King property, located just north of Snap Lake. Over the past few years, Mr. Turner has tried just about everything, except dowsing, to come up with an extension of Snap Lake on his King property. So far, the results have been mixed. Diamondex has proved that the dike does extend onto its property, and with diamond counts that are as good, or even better, than those to the south. So far, the company has not yet come up with an intersection that is sufficiently thick to catch the market's interest, but Mr. Turner is not ready to give up the hunt just yet.
That tenaciousness could come in handy in Quebec. Although Ashton has had good drill success on its Otish property, hitting diamonds with six of its eight drill holes, BHP Billiton had far less success, going zero-for-18 on ground owned by Majescor that surrounds the Ashton property. Much of the problem is prioritizing the many seemingly promising drill targets. Although the background levels for the surface samples are low, which should make delineating indicator mineral trains fairly routine, the geophysical background is noisy, which can result in the identification of many targets at the heads of the indicator mineral trains, most of which would be duds. In fact, Ashton had been exploring its property for a number for years before drilling its first holes last year.
Nevertheless, Diamondex and Majescor hope to be in a position to drill later this year. Mr. Audet said that they planned to spend about $200,000 on the first phase of exploration, which should involve more detailed surface sampling near a number of potential targets. Whether the new partners will have a drill turning this fall will depend on the outcome of the summer program, which should begin in about two weeks. Mr. Audet said that they would only drill if they felt comfortable with their targets," but impatient investors will ultimately need a drill program to feel comfortable with their new project.
The market seemed just mildly enthused with the new deal. Majescor added three cents on Tuesday and another two cents on Wednesday, closing at 65 cents, while Diamondex dropped three cents Tuesday but gained them back on Wednesday, closing at $1.05. |
