GGL Resources Acquires Land Position in Lac de Gras Diamond District

GGL Resources Corp. (TSXV:GGL) announced the acquisition of three 100 percent owned diamond properties prominently located in the prolific Lac de Gras diamond district, Northwest Territories. Lac de Gras is home to Canada’s first two diamond mines, the world class Diavik and Ekati mines discovered in the 1990’s.

As quoted in the press release:

GGL acquired the mineral tenures in early 2018 by way of staking and retains a 100 percent undivided interest in each property with no underlying conditions or royalties. The properties are strategically located taking advantage of proven economic trends, historic diamondiferous kimberlite discoveries, positive exploration results from the Company’s previous exploration campaigns and proprietary exploration dataset as well as a thorough review of information in the public domain.

Bishop Property

The Bishop property is comprised of 37 new mineral claims and one existing mineral lease collectively encompassing 30,667 hectares. The property contains the diamondiferous Bishop kimberlite discovered by GGL in 2006 and is south of and on trend with the economic diamond deposits of the Ekati diamond mine.

A portion of this region of Lac de Gras was extensively explored by GGL over a decade ago and included multiple seasons of exploration campaigns with detailed airborne geophysics and heavy mineral sampling dominating the work. High resolution ground geophysical surveys followed up on airborne targets some of which were prioritized by indicator mineral results. This work resulted in the discovery of the Bishop kimberlite which returned 11 diamonds from the initial 78.2 kilogram sample. Further review of the Bishop data suggests that additional drilling is required to thoroughly evaluate the geology, geometry and diamond distribution throughout the kimberlite as additional phases may be present.

A large gravity anomaly proximal to Bishop was subsequently tested with several short reverse circulation drill holes. This limited drilling encountered small kimberlite intercepts. Further ground geophysics followed by core drilling is required to determine the size and potential grade of this kimberlite discovery.

The remainder of the property contains numerous high priority targets identified in previous exploration campaigns conducted by GGL. The world economic crisis of 2008 essentially eliminated access to capital for exploration companies and as a result the Company was not able to move these targets forward to drill evaluation. The Company now plans to continue its target evaluation process which has been on hold since.

In addition to the reacquisition of historic GGL targets in the Bishop staking campaign the Company was also successful in acquiring the Courageous kimberlite located in the south of the new land tenure. The Courageous kimberlite, initially identified in 2005, was further advanced with core drilling  in 2008 by Consolidated Global Diamond Corp (CK). GGL’s review of public domain data identified this historic discovery as open ground. The Courageous kimberlite geophysical anomaly was described by CK as being a coincident magnetic and resistivity anomaly. CK announced drilling into sediments containing various amounts of tuffaceous kimberlite rocks. The crater sediments are described as occupying a sub circular area  of approximately 1,100 meters. Drilling difficulties prevented CK from penetrating beyond the crater sediments and fully evaluating the potential diatreme below. A 78.4 kg sample of the sediments returned 8 micro-diamonds indicating the kimberlite source rocks are diamond-bearing. GGL intends to complete detailed ground geophysical surveys at Courageous followed by further evaluation of the kimberlite and its diamond potential.

Zeus Property

The Zeus  property consists of 22 mineral claims totalling 14,803 hectares. It covers a portion of Lac de Gras and the north shore and is located only 11 kilometers south of the Ekati Diamond mines’ Fox kimberlite which is the southerly most kimberlite body in a linear trend of economic deposits at Ekati. The Zeus property is strategically located directly along this trend.

This trend of significantly diamondiferous kimberlite bodies is further validated by New Nadina’s Monument project adjacent to the southwestern boundary of the Zeus  property. Monument contains several kimberlite bodies where initial sampling has collectively returned encouraging diamond counts. The potential for new discoveries in this brownfields area if further emphasized by North Arrow Minerals Inc.’s recent announcement of a new kimberlite discovery on their Loki project adjacent to the southeastern boundary of Zeus  and on trend with this string of significantly diamondiferous kimberlite bodies including those in the Ekati mine plan.

The Company intends to employ modern kimberlite exploration techniques along with hands-on discovery knowledge of the Lac de Gras kimberlite field to add additional discovery to this apparent “gap” in the trend. The Zeus  property has been open ground and unexplored for over 5 years.

Rhombus Property

The Rhombus property lies 40 kilometers northwest of the Ekati Diamond mine and consists of 25 mineral claims covering 21,336 hectares. This strategic location exploits an apparent periodicity in the Ekati and Diavik economic trends further supported by the nearly one carat per tonne large DO-27 kimberlite resource controlled by Peregrine Diamonds Ltd.

Rhombus contains 4 kimberlites discovered in the early 1990’s, all of which are diamond bearing. A review of data in the public domain suggests there is the potential for additional unidentified kimberlite bodies. The original discoveries were a quarter of a century ago and no work has been conducted on the property area in over a decade.

Kimberlite exploration tools, techniques and understanding have evolved immensely in the past decade and the Company plans to apply these advancements to move the property towards additional discovery. This approach has been successfully demonstrated by Kennady Diamonds Inc. at the Kelvin-Faraday kimberlite complex initially discovered in 1999-2000. It received no further evaluation for a dozen years due to the initial interpretation and resulting lack of encouragement. In 2012, a new approach including modernized exploration techniques and understanding has developed this kimberlite complex to the resource stage with a recent all share purchase  by Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. valued at US$162-million (April  2018).

Click here to read the full GGL Resources Corp. (TSXV:GGL) press release.