The diamond industry is all set to receive an influx of diamonds from the Chidliak field in the next few years. The work on the Chidliak project has been progressing consistently for some time now and the recent developments reveal the consistent way that the work on the project is being done. As per recent reports, the Chidliak Joint Venture i.e. Peregrine Diamonds Limited and BHP Billiton has approved around 17.7 million dollars for the diamond exploration program of 2011. The project is one of the more promising ones in the world right now as around 50 kimberlites have been discovered since 2008. The 2011 program that has been approved by both the parties of the Joint Venture caters to both exploration of new sources and the development of already discovered ones. Effectively, the program, as per the operator of the field i.e. Peregrine Diamonds Limited consists of two objectives.
- During 2010, Peregrine Diamonds Limited discovered the CH – 31 and CH – 33 kimberlites, which revealed critical information for further exploration. The field operator will continue the further exploration of the field on the basis of new targeting information found through kimberlites discovered last year. The reason why the information from these two kimberlites is so important is that the majority of anomalies chosen for evaluation in this program have magnetic or electromagnetic responses that are similar to the CH – 31 and CH – 33 kimberlites.
- The second objective of the program would be to evaluate the already discovered kimberlites so as to find out their economic potential. The processes involved in these exercises would be core drilling and mini bulk sampling.
It is also worth noting that the field work on the project has already taken off with the third exploration camp being set up. This camp, which has been given the name Aurora is located around 42 kilometers from the Discovery Camp. Moreover, simultaneously, ground and air geophysical surveying has also begun. The program is supposed to analyze around 21 geophysical anomalies which have been categorically picked out by the geophysicists in its one year stint and will start off with the CH – 17 kimberlite and the anomaly 165. All the geophysical anomalies chosen for the project span a minimum of 2 hectares while four are believed to be even greater than 4.5 hectares.
The Chidliak project is an exploration project being undertaken in an 8,580 square kilometer area on Baffin Island located in Nunavut, Canada. The aforementioned Chidliak Joint Venture consists of BHP Billiton which holds a majority share of 51 percent and Peregrine Diamonds Limited which holds 49 percent and is the operator of the project.
In the last year alone, the field yielded around 34 kimberlites which is a substantial number. Furthermore, according to the Vice President of Exploration at BHB Billiton, Tom Peregoodoff, the company expects there to be many more discoveries from the Chidliak Field. Similarly, Brooke Clements, the President of Peregrine Diamonds Limited, stated that the project holds real potential to yield course diamond size distributions. Course diamond size distributions are very important for the project because these can end up yielding a significant amount of end products.
As mentioned earlier, the diamonds industry is watching developments in this field very attentively because of the potential that Chidliak possesses in terms of yielding commercially viable diamonds. Many experts have even suggested that fields like these hold the potential to change the dynamics of the diamonds industry which is often hamstrung by the blood diamonds coming out of conflicting nations. Consequently, the discovery of commercially feasible deposits is being prayed for from many corners of the planet.
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