NBL...oops..BDM...GCU -BML ? on TA ..Al, i will pick JABA again, thanks.
Chucka
On the OTHER hand, I was looking at the Volume on GCU and the News on BDM old New Blue Artic Star, that the Griz and Larry have high hopes for. I would buy a car from these guys: I met Larry at the PDAC last year and hope to say hi to folks on Sat or Sun while I am there next week. I am stopping into the Barker Minerals booth cause they have some gold and trace elements claims also: BOOTH 2509
some read on FA I did on BML, now the TA? Please.
Barker Minerals, Investors Exchange, Sunday / Monday, 2509
pdac.ca
Then APG is at Tuesday and Wed while BML is all 4 days:
Apollo Gold Corporation, Investors Exchange, Tuesday / Wednesday, 2627
NEW just out this week INTRIGUES ME :
Blue Diamond adds to its Legend
Blue Diamond Mining Corp BDM
Shares issued 2,446,669Feb 27 2003 close $ 0.35
Friday February 28 2003Street Wire
by Will Purcell
Larry Kryska's Blue Diamond Mining Corporation has carved out another piece of the struggling Legend project in northeastern Alberta, through an option deal that will allow the company to increase its share of the property. Initially, the company said that its share would increase to 70 per cent, up from its current 60-per-cent slice, but those figures seem somewhat low, based on earlier transactions. Mr. Kryska, an Edmonton-based chemical engineer and former car dealer -- unlike engineers, car salesmen usually make good promoters -- confirmed that there was some confusion over the matter, and he now believes that his company actually holds an additional 10-per-cent slice of Legend, and if that holds up, Blue Diamond will actually be increasing its stake in the project to 80 per cent. The confusion is no great surprise, as several partners have come and gone through the years. Unlike most of the others, Mr. Kryska's company continues to be a Legend believer, and although it was not one of the original partners, Blue Diamond's stake in the play has steadily grown over the past few years.
The latest increase will come from Blue Diamond's current partner on the Legend property, Arctic Star Diamond Corporation, which had acquired a minority interest in the property just last spring. Although Arctic Star seemed to have high hopes initially for the diamondiferous Legend play, that company now appears to be banking on another diamond legend, Chuck Fipke. Early last year, Arctic Star had picked up a small slice of Mr. Fipke's Attawapiskat project, which has created quite a market stir of late. Speculators seem far less interested in the Legend play by comparison, but there are still glimmers of hope for the Alberta diamond play, which would get a new lease on life if Ashton Mining of Canada can produce some promising diamond counts from its recent finds in the Buffalo Hills region, approximately 100 kilometres to the southwest of Legend and about 10 kilometres west of portions of Alex and Ethan, two additional Blue Diamond properties that will see work this year.
It will take a new infusion of cash for Blue Diamond to get things going, but Mr. Kryska, the car dealer, said that his company was "cashing up quite quickly." The company has been working on a private placement that would bring in $240,000, and Mr. Kryska, the chemical engineer with Betz Canada through the first half of the 1990s, said that the deal should close this week. Blue Diamond also managed to convert about $150,000 of debt to shares, and as well, the company plans to complete a brokered financing. If all those deals are successful, they could give the recently consolidated company enough money to get its Legend promotion going. Mr. Kryska said that Blue Diamond would be spending about $600,000 on exploration this year, with two-thirds of it directed toward the Legend property. The bulk of the cash will be spent on a drill program, which should begin in late April or early May.
The company planned a drill program last spring, but although it managed to get a rig to the site, a lack of water prevented it from putting any holes into the Legend targets. With its water shortage hopefully water under the bridge, and its hands on a new supply of cash, Blue Diamond should be able to test several targets this spring. The top priority appears to be the Lamasu targets, which are double-peak magnetic anomalies about 300 metres in diameter. The Lamasu North and Lamasu South targets are just a few kilometres to the northwest of the Kendu kimberlite, which Blue Diamond discovered in 2000, and a few kilometres to the southeast of Roc, a kimberlite discovered in the late 1990s. That places the Lamasu targets within the central portion of the cluster of Legend kimberlites, most of which were found in 1998. In addition to Lamasu, Blue Diamond could be drilling two additional priority targets within the Legend cluster this spring, Argonaut and Centaur, as well as two anomalies that lie outside the general area defined by the existing kimberlite discoveries, Prometheus and Cronus. As well, Mr. Kryska, who also served as president of Whyte Avenue Motors in Edmonton for much of the 1990s, said that Blue Diamond would be devoting about $150,000 of its cash to the Ethan property, which is immediately east of the Buffalo Hills property being explored by Ashton and its partners, and an additional $50,000 is earmarked for other projects.
A drill success by Blue Diamond might stir up renewed interest in the Legend play, but some promising diamond counts from two new Ashton finds would likely give the entire Alberta play an even greater boost. The play in Northern Alberta seemed all but dead until Ashton found its K-252 kimberlite a few years ago. A mini-bulk sample from that body produced a diamond grade of 0.55 carat per tonne, but with a surface area of less than two hectares, the kimberlite was deemed too small, and with about 70 metres of overburden covering the pipe, it was too deep to be of economic interest on its own. Still, the find renewed the hopes of Ashton and its rivals. Mr. Kryska said that if the kimberlite has been just 10 metres from the surface, it would probably be economic to mine.
In any case, the key significance of the K-252 kimberlite was that Ashton found the pipe using a new technique. Through the years, Ashton had been testing magnetic anomalies, but the K-252 target represented an electromagnetic anomaly that displayed little or no magnetic signature. The company's exploration efforts had been winding down, but the K-252 success opened the door to many new potential targets, and offered some hope that they might have better diamond grades. Ashton has been able to deliver on at least half of that hope in recent months, as two of its new targets have proved to be kimberlites. The samples are still being processed, so the diamond content of the new kimberlites is not yet known, but Mr. Kryska, the car dealer, is hopeful that his company's rivals "are going to have something for us to water our mouths on."
The Legend play has fallen on hard times of late, but it was big news with speculators and explorers several years ago. The latest Legend deal will allow Blue Diamond to increase its share by spending just $200,000 in exploration and issuing 300,000 shares to Arctic Star, which implies a project value of roughly $2.75-million. The modest requirement is a far cry from the heady days in the spring of 1997, when Montello Resources Ltd. granted Redwood Resources an option to earn a 50-per-cent stake in what was then a 1.6-million-hectare play, in exchange for $6.5-million in exploration costs and buying $500,000 worth of Montello's shares. Redwood ultimately managed to earn just a 30-per-cent share by spending $1.5-million, but the original deal effectively valued the property at about $14-million. That was well in excess of the value implied by the latest Legend deal, but still considerably less than what was indicated by the terms of an option deal that Montello and Redwood signed with Kennecott Canada at the height of the play in 1998. That deal required Kennecott to spend up to $30-million over a seven-year period and to buy $1-million worth of stock in the two Legend partners.
Kennecott drilled a number of targets on the Legend property during 1998, and at least seven kimberlites were discovered by poking holes into geophysical targets that were magnetic lows or magnetic highs. Just the Phoenix kimberlite proved to be diamondiferous, and that was just barely so, as just five microdiamonds were recovered from 380 kilograms of kimberlite. Those were the glory days for the Legend play, but they did not last long, due to the lack of diamonds. Montello's stock actually hit a peak of 90 cents late in 1997, and it began a steady decline early in 1998, prior to the big drill program. Kennecott's work at Legend was not enough to keep the company interested, and the Canadian exploration arm of Rio Tinto walked away from the deal by early 2000. Montello and Redwood went shopping for a new participant, and it was not long before the partners had a new deal. Mr. Kryska, who has degrees in engineering and business from the University of Alberta, took up the Alberta diamond hunt in 1998, when he became president of Blue Diamond, then known as New Blue Ribbon Resources Ltd. The company took a liking to the Legend project and early in 2000 Mr. Kryska stepped in to take Kennecott's place.
New Blue was no major however, and the terms of the deal were decidedly more favourable than those accepted by Kennecott just two years earlier. To earn a 60-per-cent share in the project, New Blue agreed to spend at least $1-million on exploration within the next two years, and although its exploration efforts have produced decidedly modest results so far, Mr. Kryska's company remains hopeful. The same could not be said for Blue Diamond's former partners, which likely the cause for the current confusion over who owns what.
New Blue apparently did manage to earn its 60-per-cent stake in the play, although that appears to have been accomplished through a renegotiated stock deal. Further complicating matters, in the fall of 2001, Blue Diamond said it was upping its share to 80 per cent by buying Redwood's remaining 12-per-cent share, along with an 8-per-cent slice of Montello's interest. The terms of the deal were quite favourable to New Blue, as the company was required to issue just 220,000 of its then 15-cent shares to pay for the one-fifth share of the Legend property, which placed a value of just $165,000 on the property as a whole. By then, Montello had lost interest in the Alberta diamond hunt, and Redwood had transformed itself into TRI Communications Solutions Inc., through the reverse takeover of Telemarket Resources Inc. It is not certain that the deal was completed however, and like many resource companies that tried high-tech, TRI has now ceased trading.
The ownership of Legend took yet another turn in the spring of 2002, when Patrick Power's Montello's gave up on Alberta diamonds for good. The company said it sold a 30-per-cent stake in Legend to Arctic Star Diamonds, also run by Mr. Power, in exchange for $200,000 in cash and 200,000 Arctic Star shares, which were trading for about a quarter at the time, and based on that, the value of the entire Legend property had climbed to just over $800,000, restoring a bit of its earlier lustre, and the latest deal has further inflated the apparent value of Legend. The recent signs of activity have given Blue Diamond's shares a bit of a boost of late as well. The stock traded for the equivalent of just 15 cents, prior to a 1:15 consolidation in January, but the shares have managed to double since then. Blue Diamond closed unchanged Thursday, at 35 cents.
(c) Copyright 2003 Canjex Publishing Ltd. stockwatch.com
Head Office
52210 RR232
Sherwood Park, AB, Canada
T8B 1B9
Telephone: (780) 417-5117
Fax: (780) 417-5181
Email: info@bluediamondmining.com
Investor Relations
52210 RR232
Sherwood Park, AB, Canada
T8B 1B9
Telephone: (780) 417-5117
Fax: (780) 417-5181
Email: info@bluediamondmining.com
Transfer Agent Computer Share
Vancouver, BC
Trading Symbol BDM: TSX Venture Exchange
Share Capital
(as of February, 2003) Issued & Outstanding: 2,446,669
Directors and Officers Mr. Larry Kryska, President and CEO
Mr. Kryska has been exploring for Diamonds in the Public Sector for over five years. He attended the University of Alberta for both Engineering and Business. While working for Betz Canada Inc., Mr. Kryska developed and managed multi-million dollar industrial chemical accounts for Sherritt International, Imperial Oil Resources and Petro Canada Inc. He has five years experience in metal processing, environmental and petrochemical industries. Mr. Kryska also has had eight years experience of owning and operating two automotive businesses.
Mr. Derek Bartlett, P.Geol., Director
Mr. Bartlett has more than 26 years experience as a geologist and in managing mining companies, including vice-president exploration for Goldfields. Mr. Bartlett is currently on the boards of Blue Emerald Resources Inc., Kingsman Resources Inc. (formerly Braddick Resources Ltd.), Oromin Explorations Ltd. and VVC Explorations Corp., all TSX Venture Exchange reporting issuers.
Mr. Peter Trynchy, Director
Mr. Trynchy was a member of the Alberta government for 30 years, from 1971 to 2001, representing the Whitecourt-Lac St. Anne area. During this time he was Minister of Transportation, Minister of Occupational Health and Safety, and Minister of Parks and Recreation. Mr. Trynchy is also a business man who brings a wealth of experience and contacts to the company.
Mr. Derek Lanser, Director
Mr. Lanser has been involved in fianancing several public Companies in the Mining Sector.
Mr. Anthony Lyons, Corporate Secretary
Mr. Lyons is an Australian National currently resident in the United Kingdom. Mr. Lyons has been involved for many years in management of European manufacturing and technology based companies. His experience has been gained in the areas of Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration, land survey, nuclear industry and steel industry. Mr. Lyons currently holds positions in Metal Process Control AB Sweden and its subsidiary Metal Process Control GmbH Germany, in the capacity of Chairman and Group President. He also holds the position of Chairman and Managing Director of Metal Products & Equipment GmbH Germany, as well as Managing Director of MPT Consultancy United Kingdom.
Dr. Roger D. Morton - Advisor to the Board
Dr. Morton was a Professor of Economic Geology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton from 1967 to 1996. He is now Professor Emeritius in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta. Dr. Morton holds a B.Sc. (Hons) Geology degree and a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Nottingham in England. He was previously a lecturer at the University of Nottingham in England and has taught at Nancy in France, at the University of Hamburg in Germany and at Rhodes University in South Africa. Dr. Morton is currently the Chairman of the Boards of Muskox Minerals Corp., Uruguay Goldfields Inc. and Mindoro Resources Corp. He is also a board member of Black Swan Resources. Dr. Morton is currently President and owner of Polar Star Diamonds Ltd. and of Diamori Ltd. Dr. Morton's expertise lies in the field of mineral exploration geology, diamond geology, gemology and corporate finance and communications. He was the co-founder of the gold producer Golden Star Resources and a major promoter of the Ni-Cu area play in the Voisey's Bay Region.
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