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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Wednesday was a weak 50-53-147 as the TSX Venture Exchange gained nine points to 705. Polished diamond prices inched upward. The bull run of Eric Friedland's Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. (PGD) continued again today. The stock, just 13.5 cents in January, traded to an intraday high of 37 cents before closing up one cent to 36 cents on 717,000 shares today. Peregrine is working on mini-bulk tests of three Chidliak kimberlites on Baffin Island and should have a steady supply of news this year. Peter Dickie and Mark Smith's Niocorp Developments Ltd. (NB) rebounded today, gaining 15 cents to $1.07 on 2.93 million shares. Niocorp, $1.90 in March, fell to just 84 cents Tuesday after revealing its Elk Creek niobium and scandium project in Nebraska would have a huge capital cost and a modest rate of return.

Robert Gannicott's Dominion Diamond Corp. (DDC) gained 26 cents to $22.41 on 242,000 shares. Dominion has wrapped up a bulk sampling program at Sable, a kimberlite near the northern boundary of the core Ekati property, north of Lac de Gras in the Northwest Territories. There should be few surprises as this is not the first test of the pipe, which was discovered in the early 1990s and has since been swapped in and out of the Ekati mine plan on occasion. Chantal Lavoie, Dominion's chief operating officer, says the new test will yield more carats and increase the confidence in the diamond value. Dominion should have over 1,000 more carats to evaluate, as its reverse circulation drills have apparently extracted over 1,500 tonnes of kimberlite, drilling eight holes to depths of about 300 metres.

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