Olivut Resources (OLV-V) is unpromotably quiet, but deep within its latest quarterly report, Ms. Keough reveals that "a reverse circulation drill program is currently under way" at the Seahorse diamond project, north of Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories. Olivut can earn a 50-per-cent interest from Dr. Ray Davies's Talmora Diamond (TAI-Cse) in exchange for $1.2-million in exploration expenses over a two-year period. Those two years run out early next summer, and while the company spent about $500,000 through the end of July, much of went to sitting around in the Seahorse base camp, waiting for good weather.
The drilling is apparently focused on targets identified this year from an airborne magnetic survey -- work that had to be deferred from last summer because of bad weather that made flying impossible for days on end. (Or, as Ms. Keough frustratingly put it: "Unseasonable, extremely poor weather conditions severely hampered field progress with the helimag survey, since flying was not possible throughout the majority of the attenuated field season." Patience is needed to work the area, as the hardy souls who live there will tell you, no weather is truly unseasonable near the Arctic Circle, and while the area is known as the Land of the Midnight Sun in spring and summer, an equally accurate description is the "Land of Stratus and Fog.")
Ms. Keough, who hired on as a young geologist with Dr. Christopher Jennings in the early days of Canada's diamond hunt, and Dr. Davies, who had been working with De Beers in the North back when Ms. Keough was in grade school, tout the Seahorse area as prime diamond country. They believe that the subducting ocean crust brought plenty of carbon deep beneath the Seahorse property, where the Earth's pressure and heat turned the material into diamonds, which were subsequently blasted to the surface by kimberlite eruptions.
Talmora was never able to find those kimberlites, although it was never truly able to look, thanks to its chronically barren treasury. In 2012, Dr. Davies had a crew lug a packsack drill -- the name says it all -- to one target, where Talmora turned up shards of material that might have been kimberlitic in nature. Dr. Davies said that he needed a real drill to test the target and others nearby, but he was never able to raise enough cash. Enter Ms. Keough and Olivut, although for the past several years she has had the same cash woes that plagued Dr. Davies. Perhaps that will change, although Ms. Keough's lack of promotion ahead of the drill program may be a caution for investors not to expect much.
Will Purcell |
