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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for an abbreviated Christmas Eve session was an upbeat 50-40-161. The TSX Venture Exchange gained six points to 903 while polished diamond prices inched upward. George Read and Ken MacNeill's battered Saskatchewan diamond promotion, Shore Gold Inc. (SGF) closed unchanged at 13 cents on 160,000 shares. The stock recently set a new 14-year low of 11.5 cents amid a flurry of tax-loss selling, as it has been unable to raise the $2-billion needed for its Star-Orion South mine. Don Baxter's Focus Graphite Inc. (FMS) shot up another 7.5 cents to 46 cents on 607,000 shares. Focus, 25 cents earlier this month, recently signed an off-take agreement for its proposed Lac Knife graphite mine in Quebec.

Grenville Thomas and Ken Armstrong's North Arrow Minerals Inc. (NAR: $0.67) is waiting to hear if Matt Manson's Stornoway Diamond Corp. (SWY: $0.74) will exercise its back-in right on the Pikoo diamond play in Northern Saskatchewan. North Arrow has just earned an 80-per-cent interest in the grassroots play but Stornoway can claw back a 20-per-cent interest by repaying North Arrow triple its exploration expenses. The clock on that 60-day back-in right began ticking Nov. 18. Stornoway declined a similar right on the Timiskaming property earlier this year after a North Arrow drill program found nothing. At Pikoo, North Arrow hit kimberlite in several drill holes, including multiple hits into the PK-150 kimberlite. That rock produced the best diamond counts ever obtained in Saskatchewan. A 210-kilogram batch yielded 745 diamonds, including 23 that sat on a 0.85-millimetre mesh. Those stones weighed 0.28 carat, suggesting a commercial diamond content topping one carat per tonne. The small sample size and the erratic size distribution curve leave many questions unanswered so Stornoway may consider Pikoo just an exploration diversion from its planned $750-million mine at Renard in Quebec. North Arrow will undoubtedly do more drilling at Pikoo for next year. That work will include more exploration drilling and probably more tests of PK-150.

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