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Gold/Mining/Energy : Shear Minerals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: james flannigan who wrote (2)	8/3/2003 12:43:17 AM
From: Rocket Red	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42

Diamonds in the rough Search for kimberlite pipes in Canada's North beyond Pamela Strand's wildest dreams By SHELLY DECKER, EDMONTON SUN Pamela Strand is garnering worldwide attention for her search for a girl's best friend. The 37-year-old Edmonton woman is at the helm of Shear Minerals Ltd., which is exploring 13 potential diamond formations plus three gold deposits. Its flagship venture, Churchill Diamond Project, has captured the world's interest. Sprawling a massive 1.5 million acres near Nunavut's Rankin Inlet, recent drilling discovered 11 kimberlite pipes, geological formations that may contain diamonds. "It's beyond my wildest dreams, really, what we've discovered right now at Churchill," said Strand. Testing to see if the kimberlites contain precious gems will be completed this fall, but initial results look good. "The chemistry of our indicator minerals is quite exceptional and it's suggestive of diamond-bearing kimberlites," said Strand, a geologist, CEO and president of the publicly traded Shear Minerals. "In Canada, it's very unique. You can probably name the number of projects on your hand that have ever been able to have this early success rate," she said. About $6 billion US of rough stones are sold annually in the world. Converted to jewelry, their value rises to about $40 billion US. Canada's potential as a lucrative diamond source has been growing rapidly in the last few years. Canada's second diamond mine, Diavik, opened this year following the success of the Ekati project. "We've gone from nothing to the third-largest producer of diamonds in 10 years in the world. This is a story that the general population of Canada is unaware of," she said. "Canada is virtually unexplored for diamonds. A lot of the areas have been explored for gold. But we've only been looking for diamonds here, at least most of the industry, for 10 years. That provides an opportunity to go into regions where no one else has looked before, which means maybe there is something big there." There are more than 6,000 kimberlites in the world, but less than 1% are economically viable. "You're battling huge odds, but if you do find that mother lode the rewards are huge," said Strand. In a bid to defuse investment costs and lower the risks, Shear teams up with a partner for its exploration projects, sprinkled throughout the Canadian North, Alberta and Alaska. Stornoway Diamond Corporation and BHP Billington are on board for Churchill. Twice this year Strand has travelled to Churchill to check out the site and its 25 employees, Shear's biggest workforce to date on one project. "You can't find something unless you're out there looking." Married without kids, Strand shrugs off the fact that her age and gender are unusual in an industry that remains male-dominated. Just a few decades ago, she would have been a rare commodity, but there has been a shift in the industry. "I guess it is pretty unusual for women to be running mining companies," said Strand. But her gender has never been made an issue in her career. "I think that the mining and exploration industries are changing. There are several companies out there that are run by women geologists, too. So we're sort of changing the scene of the exploration industry," she said. Beyond the gender shift, there's also been a change in the way such firms conduct business. "We're finding that there's sort of a new guard happening in the exploration business. It's quite refreshing," said Strand. "(Before) you always thought of your mining promoter as this guy who would try to sell you swampland in Florida, like the Bre-X stuff. "Now, how we run our company has to be accountable. It's changed. Now you've got a person like me that's a geologist. I'm trying to do it the right way. I'll tell you the upside and the downside and you can make your own decisions on whether to invest." The Toronto-raised woman worked as a geologist for several years in the north before coming to Edmonton in 1996. Strand and some other investors took over Shear Minerals in 1997. But then the small firm was caught in the Bre-X backlash that swept the exploration industry. Calgary-based Bre-X had the notorious distinction of being behind the world's biggest gold mining fraud. Shares jumped from 30 cents a share in 1993 to $184 a share before crashing in 1997 when the firm was believed to have salted samples from a mine. "It certainly didn't make things easy," recalled Strand. But after just a few years in business, Strand has displayed a tenacity and savvy business sense. While there's been no tangible payoffs yet, the company is definitely moving forward. "This year is sort of the culmination of five years of work," said Strand. "We have 13 diamond projects, eight of them are drill-ready, and they've only been drill-ready this year. That's pretty unique for a company to have all these projects lined up and ready to test."

To: james flannigan who wrote (2)	8/6/2003 11:52:17 PM
From: Rocket Red	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42

Cross the T and dot the i and maybe you can see where this below leads :) Thursday September 19 2002 News Release See Northern Empire Minerals Ltd (C-NEM) News Release Mr. John Robins of Northern Empire reports KIMBERLITE FLOAT CONFIRMED AT TWO SITES APPROXIMATELY 15 KM A ... Kimberlite float has been recovered from two different locations within the 540,000-acre Churchill diamond project, located in the Rankin Inlet area of the Nunavut Territory. As a result of ground prospecting while till sampling during Northern Empire's August program, conducted by APEX Geoscience Ltd., two occurrences of kimberlite float were discovered approximately 15 kilometres apart. Both occurrences have been confirmed as kimberlite by R.L. Barnett Geological of London, Ont. Both occurrences of kimberlite float were discovered in the immediate vicinity of diamond indicator minerals from tills. The tills yielded a significant G10 subcalcic pyrope garnet population supported by eclogitic garnets, chrome diopsides, chromites and picroilmenites. The chemistry of the indicator minerals recovered from the kimberlite float and nearby till samples indicates a high degree of potential for the discovery of diamondiferous kimberlites on the property. The mineral chemistry of these tills and recovered kimberlite float is unique to the region, differing from the known kimberlite and lamprophyre rocks previously recognized. The kimberlite float chemistry indicates that at least two separate new local kimberlite sources occur within the Churchill diamond project area. "The discovery of kimberlitic float associated with indicator samples containing significant G10 counts significantly increases the prospectivity of the Churchill diamond project," said John Robins, president of Northern Empire. "Based on these encouraging results coupled with our ongoing airborne geophysical survey results, we believe there is potential for a cluster of kimberlites within the Churchill project area," said Pamela Strand, president and chief executive officer of Shear Minerals.