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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Monday was a mediocre 77-92-141 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell three points to 625. Dermot Desmond and Mark Wall's Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (MPVD) lost one cent to 49 cents on 134,000 shares.

Mountain Province has had an interesting second quarter -- one both better and worse than expected -- mining and selling diamonds from its 49-per-cent-owned Gahcho Kue mine, 250 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. On the bright side, the carat haul was up, and the average diamond price achieved remained lofty, which bodes well for the company's formal second quarter report expected next month. On the other hand, the Gloomy Gusses could have plenty to moan about later this year.

Mountain Province and its majority co-venturer, De Beers Canada, put a few hundred extra tonnes of kimberlite through their processing plant in the spring quarter, matching the 750,000-tonne result achieved a year ago. Diamond production nevertheless reached 1.34 million carats, thanks entirely to a 6-per-cent boost in grade, which averaged 179 carats per hundred tonnes, up from the 168 carats per hundred tonnes achieved a year earlier.

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