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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Wednesday was a lacklustre 49-58-154. The TSX Venture Exchange fell fractionally to 996 while diamond prices inched upward. Ken MacNeill and George Read's Saskatchewan diamond promotion, Shore Gold Inc. (SGF) jumped 3.5 cents to 33.5 cents on 747,000 shares. The company's Star-Orion South project is stalled until it can raise $2-billion to build the mammoth mine, but its stock continues to oscillate frantically. Bruce Duncan's Canada Carbon Inc. (CCB) gained one cent to 26.5 cents on 4.29 million shares. The company has begun trenching at another graphite anomaly on its Miller property in southwestern Quebec.

Patrick Evans's Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (MPV), up one cent to $5.71 on 39,000 shares, will upgrade and expand its resource deep within the Tuzo pipe at Gahcho Kue, 250 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife. Tuzo has been difficult at times for Mountain Province and its co-venturer, De Beers Canada, since its discovery in the late 1990s. The big pipe has a grade comparable with the other two main pipes at Gahcho Kue, but between 100 and 300 metres, the kimberlite is heavily diluted by country rock, lowering its mining grade to barely one carat per tonne. Worse, the diamond value at Tuzo seemed lower than at the other pipes, until the partners recovered a large and particularly high-quality gem. Now, Mr. Evans believes Tuzo is a vital cog in the Gahcho Kue plan, and its importance could grow with its expanding resource. A big deep drilling program in 2012 tripled the resource in the Tuzo Deeps, where Mountain Province and De Beers now have 3.5 million tonnes indicated at 1.75 carats per tonne and 8.9 million inferred at 1.61 carats per tonne. The upper portion of Tuzo contains 12.3 million tonnes indicated but its grade is just 1.20 carats per tonne, thanks to heavy dilution in its midsection. The entire Tuzo pipe now holds over 35 million carats, making it by far the largest pipe at Gahcho Kue; the most recent drilling should expand the count significantly. The partners will probably have to exploit the Tuzo Deeps by underground mining; the only question is if the diamond price will be high enough to compensate for the higher costs and uncertain ground conditions associated with an underground mine. So far, the company's diamond appraisals and modelled data appear encouraging.

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