A quarter century of digging under ice sees winners, losers, and an Irish billionaire teaming up with De Beers.
On the semi-frozen surface of Faraday Lake in Canada’s subarctic, two diamond rigs are drilling around the clock. It’s spring breakup north of the 63rd parallel, which means the Kennady Diamonds Inc. exploration team is running out of time.
“It’s starting to candle,” says geologist Martina Bezzola, scuffing her rubber boot over the fast-melting ice where vertical tunnels, or “candles,” have recently appeared. The thaw means the team has two weeks to extract kimberlite samples from beneath the lake before they’re banished to drilling onshore. “Basically it’s like sticking a needle into a haystack to determine what’s in the haystack.”
Twenty-five years after the first diamonds were found in Canada’s Northwest Territories, it’s still a game of hurry-up-and-wait. For every thousand grassroots exploration projects, only one becomes a mine. Snap Lake, one of three operating mines in the region, was shuttered by De Beers last year, a casualty of harsh geography and falling diamond prices.