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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Thursday was an upbeat 86-54-170 as the TSX Venture Exchange jumped 11 points to 679. Adrian Smith's First Atlantic Nickel Corp. (FAN) was among the unchanged, at 23 cents on 149,000 shares. The company has begun a second phase of drilling at its Atlantic nickel project in central Newfoundland. The new program is designed to expand the RPM zone. RPM was identified in drilling last year, in which the company intercepted "visibly disseminated awaruite."

Those lengths were significant, with the first hole returning a 383-metre intercept grading 0.24 per cent nickel and a magnetically recoverable Davis Tube grade of 0.13 per cent. Two other holes had comparable grades and one of those had a comparable Davis Tube result. (Assays for the last hole and the Davis Tube results for the last two tests are still pending.)

The phase II drilling involves stepout holes to expand the currently defined mineralized footprint, which spans an area 500 metres long and 400 metres wide. The new holes will target a high-priority area to the north at Pipestone Pond and to the east at Chrome Pond, as well as to the west at an adjacent fault zone. The company is looking to outline an area that could contain over one billion tonnes of mineralization. (No, Mr. Regulator, that is not a resource estimate, although investors will undoubtedly assess the pursued tonnage in the context of the grades received so far.)

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