Twitter

Diamonds – Mining, Lab-Grown and Conflict/Blood

Mountain Province’s diamond output up despite virus disruptions – by Cecillia Jamasmie (Mining.com – October 16, 2020)

https://www.mining.com/

Canada’s Mountain Province Diamonds (TSX: MPVD), which holds a 49% stake in the remote Gahcho Kué mine, saw production at the operation jump by 30% during the third quarter from the previous three months as crews adjust to covid-19 protocols.

The company churned out a total of 9.88 million tonnes of ore and waste material in the three months to Sep. 30, compared to the 6.84 million tonnes mined during the second quarter of the year.

The figure, however, is about 16% lower than the 11.7 million tonnes the Northwest Territories diamond mine produced in the same period last year.

Read more

How a city lives with HUGE hole in the ground (PHOTOS) – by Yekaterina Sinelschikova (Russia Beyond The Headlines – October 15, 2020)

https://www.rbth.com/

The city of Mirny has just one attraction – an incredible hole in the ground, which can be seen from space. Possibly the most famous hole in Russia, this moderately sized pit freaked some Reddit users out, leading to thousands of bewildered comments, such as: “Love the airport that just ends at the mine. Overshoot your runway a bit? Yeah, that’s the end of your vacation.”

On the edge of the mind-boggling quarry there indeed sits a city – Mirny. It’s situated in the biggest and most barren region of the country – Yakutia (or Sakha Republic, as you may also know it), a huge landmass that occupies a fifth of the country’s territory, but is inhabited by less than a million people.

The city of Mirny itself has 35,000 inhabitants and they’re there mainly for one reason: diamonds. In fact, they’re why the city was built in the first place.

Read more

Brazil Cracking Down on Rising Illegal Diamond Mining – by Isaac Norris(InSight Crime – October 13, 2020)

https://www.insightcrime.org/

A recent operation in northern Brazil has put a spotlight on the country’s often overlooked illegal diamond trade, but authorities are only scratching the surface of the fast-growing criminal economy.

In late September, Brazilian authorities launched a massive operation to curb illegal diamond mining in the Roosevelt Indigenous reserve between the northern states of Rondônia and Mato Grosso, Globo reported.

The operation consisted of raids across eight states that targeted illegal miners, intermediaries who valued the diamonds, companies selling them and even Indigenous residents who collaborated with the miners.

Read more

Dominion Diamonds says the proposed sale of Ekati is off (CBC News North – October 9, 2020)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

The owner of the Ekati diamond mine in the Northwest Territories says the proposed $166 million dollar sale of the mine to affiliates of the Washington Companies is off.

In a press release Friday Dominion Diamonds said it had stopped negotiations around the proposed sale of certain Dominion assets, including the Ekati mine.

In the press release Dominion said it has been advised that surety bond users and the purchaser reached an “impasse in negotiations” with no reasonable chance of reaching an agreement that is satisfactory to all parties before the deal was set to go before the courts for approval on Oct. 14.

Read more

Diamonds found with gold in Canada’s Far North offer clues to Earth’s early history – by Michael Brown (Folio.ca – October 6, 2020)

https://www.folio.ca/

The presence of diamonds in an outcrop atop an unrealized gold deposit in Canada’s Far North mirrors the association found above the world’s richest gold mine, according to University of Alberta research that fills in blanks about the thermal conditions of Earth’s crust three billion years ago.

“The diamonds we have found so far are small and not economic, but they occur in ancient sediments that are an exact analog of the world’s biggest gold deposit—the Witwatersrand Goldfields of South Africa, which has produced more than 40 per cent of the gold ever mined on Earth,” said Graham Pearson, researcher in the Faculty of Science and Canada Excellence Research Chair Laureate in Arctic Resources.

“Diamonds and gold are very strange bedfellows. They hardly ever appear in the same rock, so this new find may help to sweeten the attractiveness of the original gold discovery if we can find more diamonds.”

Read more

Canadian “flawless” diamond sets online record of $15.7m at auction – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – October 5, 2020)

https://www.mining.com/

A rare, flawless 102-carat white diamond found at the now closed Victor mine in Canada, has sold for $15.7 million (HK$122m), a record price in an online auction.

The small egg-size diamond was cut from a larger 271-carat rough, found in 2018, and then cut and polished for more than a year.

The bidding on the stone began in an online auction in September, culminating with an in-person auction at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong on Monday evening.

Read more

Can lab-grown diamonds replace the real thing? – by Laura McCreddie-Doak (The Union Journal – October 4, 2020)

https://theunionjournal.com/

This story was produced as part of CNN Style’s The September Issues, a hub for facts, features and opinions about fashion, the climate crisis, and you.

Billy Porter is a man who knows how to rise to a fashion occasion. For the 2019 Met Gala, the “Pose” star dressed as the Pharaoh god Ra and was carried onto the red carpet by six shirtless men, while his 2020 Grammys ensemble included a hat with a crystal-curtain fringe that opened and closed.

Then at this year’s Academy Awards, he donned a 500-strong diamond necklace from British jeweler Lark & Berry, while he performed a medley with Janelle Monae. The diamonds, as flawless as any other worn at that event, weren’t dug out of the ground, they were grown in a laboratory.

Read more

Attawapiskat First Nation challenges DeBeers’ proposal for third landfill site (CBC News Sudbury – October 1, 2020)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/

DeBeers Canada is decommissioning the Victor Diamond Mine

Attawapiskat First Nation says it’s challenging the construction of another proposed landfill site near the community.

The site would be located about 90 kilometers west of the community and would process demolition waste from the Victor Diamond Mine, which is being decommissioned. It would be the third landfill managed by DeBeers Canada, the company that owns and operates the mine.

Attawapiskat has hired environmental consultant Don Richardson who says the 100,000 cubic metre landfill would be quite large. “The total amount of concrete of the CN Tower is probably about 45,000 cubic metres,” said Richardson. “So you could stick two CN Towers in this facility. It’s not a small landfill.”

Read more

Attawapiskat First Nation Seeks For DeBeers to Clean Up their Mess (NetNewsLedger.com – September 28, 2020)

http://www.netnewsledger.com/

ATTAWAPISKAT FN – DeBeers Canada (DBC) is seeking Ontario Government approval for a third landfill waste site to be built and filled up at the Victor Mine Site, located in a vulnerable James Bay wetlands area, and in a place of critical importance to Attawapiskat.

The Victor Mine is now in the closure phase, where decommissioning and remediation are supposed to leave the landscape in a clean and safe state.

The mine operated from 2005 to 2019 and with an annual production rate is 2.7 million tonnes a year, or about 600,000 carats a year in diamond grade.

Read more

The hunt for diamonds dazzles Cruz Cobalt – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – September 24, 2020)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Vancouver cobalt hunter dusting off northeastern projects to evaluate gemstone potential

One of northeastern Ontario largest landholders of prospective cobalt properties has been transfixed by the discovery of diamonds.

Vancouver’s Cruz Cobalt has emerged from a period of inactivity to announce that the resurgence in diamond exploration near its five properties near Cobalt has swayed them to start searching for these gemstones.

In a recent release, the company said it’s onboard with the “renewed chase” to find the source of the historic Nipissing Yellow Diamond.

Read more

Africa’s Diamond Capital Invests in a Futuristic Innovation Hub – by Paul Burkhardt (Bloomberg News – September 18, 2020)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The Icon Building, a $60-million anchor for a Silicon Valley-style technology incubator in Botswana, reflects the nation’s mineral wealth — and its need to think beyond it.

Africa has seen the ruin that resource riches can bring. In cities like Luanda in Angola and the South African metropolis of Johannesburg, glimmering corporate headquarters are often surrounded by shantytowns; sometimes the office towers themselves are abandoned once the commodities run out.

The nation of Botswana is trying not to fall deeply into that trap. Its economy relies heavily on diamond mining — it’s the home of the Jwaneng open-pit mine, the world’s richest, which is run jointly with the U.K.-based De Beers Group.

But the government is acutely aware that diamond mining is not forever. Unemployment and income inequality are a growing concern in this country of about 2.3 million people.

Read more

Rare 102-carat Canadian diamond could be among the world’s most expensive – by Pete Evans (CBC News Business – September 15, 2020)

https://www.cbc.ca/

Diamond was unearthed at Victor Mine in Northern Ontario in 2018

A rare 102-carat diamond found in Northern Ontario two years ago could be among the most expensive of its kind in an auction that starts online and is set to culminate in person in Hong Kong in early October.

Mined at DeBeers’ now-closed Victor Mine in 2018, the diamond, about the size of a small egg, was cut from a larger 271-carat rough diamond, and then cut and polished for more than a year.

Those in the industry say the stone has a lot of features going for it. The diamond is known as a Type II diamond, which are among the most chemically pure among naturally occurring diamonds.

Read more

Are Radioactive Diamond Batteries a Cure for Nuclear Waste? – by Daniel Oberhaus (Wired Magazine – August 31, 2020)

https://www.wired.com/

Researchers are developing a new battery powered by lab-grown gems made from reformed nuclear waste. If it works, it will last thousands of years.

IN THE SUMMER of 2018, a hobby drone dropped a small package near the lip of Stromboli, a volcano off the coast of Sicily that has been erupting almost constantly for the past century.

As one of the most active volcanoes on the planet, Stromboli is a source of fascination for geologists, but collecting data near the roiling vent is fraught with peril.

So a team of researchers from the University of Bristol built a robot volcanologist and used a drone to ferry it to the top of the volcano, where it could passively monitor its every quake and quiver until it was inevitably destroyed by an eruption.

Read more

Cheaper diamonds fire life into the hidden world of gem trading (Bloomberg News/Mining Weekly – August 31, 2020)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

For the past six months, the global diamond hubs in Antwerp, Belgium, and Mumbai have been at a standstill, with cutting and polishing factories closed and trading floors shuttered.

Now, a capitulation on prices by the biggest miners is sparking the industry back to life. After refusing to budge on diamond prices during much of the pandemic, De Beers and Russian rival Alrosa PJSC decided last week they saw enough signs of recovering demand and seized the opportunity, cutting some prices by almost 10%.

The impact was instant, as rough diamond buyers snapped up about half a billion dollars in uncut gems, according to people familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because the information is private.

Read more

Tiffany will soon reveal everywhere your diamond has traveled – Kim Bhasin (Bloomberg News – August 18, 2020)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

Tiffany & Co. wants to ease customers’ concerns about human rights abuses in the diamond industry by providing them with an unprecedented amount of detail about the precious stones it sells.

Beginning in October, the 183-year-old luxury retailer will provide expanded origin details for newly sourced, individually registered diamonds that trace the stone’s path from the ground to the jewelry case.
The project, which the company says is an industry first, took nearly two decades to complete due to the challenges of tracking down sourcing information.

Read more