TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Canada’s Dominion Diamond on Wednesday released a reserves and resources statement for the Ekati mine, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, saying there are enough diamonds in the compliant reserves category to sustain mining to 2019, and noting there was surfeit potential to add more resources to this category.

The company, which recently acquired an 80% majority stake in the mine, said Ekati’s National Instrument (NI) 43-101-compliant probable mineral reserves of 20.6-million tonnes contains an estimated 19.6-million carats.

The indicated mineral resources, which include the reserves, stood at 105.7-million tonnes containing an estimated 127.5-million carats and inferred resources of 24.9-million tonnes containing an estimated 19.1-million carats.

Dominion Diamond said there was significant upside potential to extend the mine life if some or all of the mineralisation was promoted to resource status. Further, the Jay, Lynx, Sable and Fox deep mineral resources might be able to be incorporated in the life-of-mine plan once sufficient additional technical work had been undertaken.

Additional potential for supplemental process plant feed was present in the form of coarse reject tails that have been stockpiled at Ekati since the start of production in 1998. There was also potential to treat low-grade stockpiles, mainly derived from openpit mining at the Fox kimberlite, if the grades in the stockpiles could be demonstrated to be economic with additional testwork.

The company said the Koala kimberlite was being mined using an incline caving method, and Koala North was using a sub-level retreat mining method. The Fox openpit was currently active and the Misery pit was undergoing a pushback.

The company planned to incorporate the updated estimates in a NI 43-101-compliant technical report it plans to publish soon.

The Ekati mine consists of two joint ventures (JVs), the Core Zone JV and the Buffer Zone JV, and the mine consists of 282 mining leases over 262 175 ha, containing 150 known kimberlites, with mineral resources currently estimated for eight pipes, and mineral reserves for five.