CanAlaska Uranium (CVV-V) Mr. Dasler, president and chief executive officer, says that going forward, Canalaska expects to focus on the West MacArthur uranium prospect and the West Athabasca kimberlite project in northwestern Saskatchewan. By "going forward" Mr. Dasler must be referring to the calendar, as the company's kimberlite hunt has been going nowhere since fall, when its former co-venturer, De Beers Canada, quit the project in what was a major reverse. Canalaska's stock surged to $1.55 from 45 cents in spring after De Beers agreed to spend up to $20.4-million in the project over a seven-year period. It returned to its customary perch in September, after De Beers's first drill program came up empty and was aborted early. De Beers said it was walking away just before Christmas, snuffing out the slight semblance of a rally.
Mr. Dasler insists that West Athabasca "merits exploration for diamonds" and he says that Canalaska would concentrate on evaluating several of the more interesting magnetic anomalies remaining to be drilled. (De Beers had tested just seven of the 85 targets when it quit.) De Beers revealed that the seven anomalies it tested were caused, not by kimberlites poking through sedimentary rock as hoped, but by magnetic material within organic overburden. Mr. Dasler now says that the positive and negative magnetic responses evident in recently obtained data "would not be caused by similar organic material." De Beers apparently did not share his belief, or at least not his enthusiasm, and in fact, Mr. Dasler's faith appears to waver when it comes to cutting cheques. He says that he expects "there will be parties that will wish to help us test the remaining targets."
Mr. Dasler also has diamond claims farther west, in northeastern Alberta. He says that Canalaska is "currently marketing" that property to third parties, helped by the fact that the company covered about 40 per cent of the property with a close-spaced magnetic survey. That will probably be the fate of the West Athabasca project as well, assuming Mr. Dasler can indeed round up some explorer willing to pick up where De Beers left off. There will be plenty of data to review at West Athabasca, as De Beers recently dropped off all its material and Canalaska is currently poring over the information pertaining to its priority targets.
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