Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. announced the completion of the winter drilling programme at its  Kennady North Project, which was  recently acquired through a business combination with Kennady Diamonds Inc. 

Of the three drill rigs   active on the programme,   one drill was dedicated to delineation drilling on Faraday 2; the second drill was dedicated to geotechnical drilling on the Faraday kimberlites;  and the third drill was assigned to testing exploration targets within the Kelvin-Faraday Corridor.

A total of 38 drill holes were completed for a programme total of 6,826 metres.

“Delineation drilling on the northwest extension of the Faraday 2 kimberlite has been completed,” Mountain Provice said providing details of the programme. “The northwest extension, discovered in 2017, extends the Faraday 2 kimberlite by over 150 metres, with geologic units in the inferred resource continuing into the northwest extension … The completed drilling is expected to advance the Faraday 2 pipe shell model to an inferred level of confidence.”   

 Dr. Tom McCandless, former director and qualified person for Kennady Diamonds and now technical advisor to Mountain Province, commented, “The goal of the Faraday geotechnical programme was to complete drilling that will advance the Faraday kimberlites from a scoping-level to a pre-feasibility level of confidence in terms of geotechnical analysis. In this respect the programme was very successful, with all of the planned drill holes and associated geotechnical surveys, ground water sampling and other required testwork completed.”

A third drill rig has been dedicated to testing geophysically-defined exploration targets located in close proximity to the Faraday and Kelvin kimberlites since early April. A total of eight targets were tested with a total of 17 drill holes. “Kimberlite has been intersected in all holes, consisting of kimberlite sheet complexes with the longest intercept being 6.85 metres of coherent kimberlite,” the Company said. “In every case the kimberlite sheets are intimately associated with greater zones of altered and brecciated country rock.”

Dr. McCandless added, “We conducted a systematic approach to drill testing exploration targets located in close proximity to the known Faraday and Kelvin kimberlites. While only kimberlite sheets were intersected, in each case the subtle geophysical anomalies we targeted were explained by intervals of highly altered and fractured country rock immediately adjacent to the kimberlite sheets. Similarly fractured and altered country rock is associated with both the Kelvin and the Faraday pipes and we are confident that kimberlite pipes may be associated with some of the geophysical anomalies that remain to be tested.”