By Andrew de Souza

Shore Gold remains optimistic about mine

Mar 18, 2011 | 6:14 AM

Over the span of billions of years, the North American tectonic plate moved in a south west direction away from Atlantic and Europe at a rate of about three inches per year.

As the plate inched along for between one and three billion years, diamonds were being formed some 300 kilometers from the surface, a result from the high pressure and relatively low temperatures.

They would have remained deep in the Earth to this day except that about 100 million years ago, as Tyrannosaurus Rex stalked their pray, volcanoes began to form and molten rock from the Earth’s mantle picked up the diamonds and transported them to the surface.

Eventually, the volcanoes died down and left pillars of volcanic rock, known as kimberlite, packed with diamonds and other minerals.

“We needed the volcanoes to bring (the diamonds) up,” said Shawn Harvey, geology manager with Shore Gold.

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“Well, luckily in the Fort a la Corne area, we’ve got about 70 of them.”

On Thursday, members of Shore Gold Inc. told guests of the Prince Albert Chamber of Commerce that the mine continues to look promising – especially with two that together weighed almost 50 carats and a 12 carat stone so pure it’s valued at almost $180,000.

“We’ve basically just scratched the surface of what we’ll pull up with our bulk deposit. We know we’ve got the big diamonds there and we project that we’re going to get big valuable stones.”

The company is inching closer towards completing the goal of starting to mine, said Eric Cline, Shore Gold’s vice president for corporate affairs.

“We’ve been at it for 15 or 16 years which seems like a very long time to the public,” said Cline.

“But we’re three quarters of the way in terms of the average length of time for developing a diamond mine and I think it’s fair to say we’re at least that far advanced in terms of doing the things you need to do leading up to a production decision.”

Currently, the company is waiting on its 4,300-page environmental impact statements to be approved by the province and federal governments. As well, they are working on their second and final feasibility study which is expected to be completed by the middle of the year.

The company estimates that as much as $13 billion worth of diamonds are in the forest, making it one of the largest potential reserves in the world.

adesouza@panow.com