AGD Diamonds said that it was granted licenses for diamond exploration, including exploration and evaluation of diamond deposits, in the Mezensky District of the Arkhangelsk Province. These include Razlomnoe, Torfyanoe and Yuzhno-Verkhotinskoe targets. The company also received the exploration license for the Krugly area on December 5, 2018. The areas where the company will conduct diamond exploration operations are located close to the Grib diamond deposit, which is being developed by the miner.
Vladimir Schukin, chief geologist of AGD Diamonds, said that the work on the discovery of deposits might take a lot of time, as the company intends to determine the most suitable exploration method in order not to miss the diamond deposits.
‘‘These areas for licensing were prepared by the geological service of our company. The exploration work on the sites had been previously carried out, so now a thorough analysis of the available geological materials is needed, and after that - the choice of an exploration method that will allow us not to miss the field. Then we need to go through the process of geological examination. There is a lot of work, these are geological, geophysical, geochemical, aerogeophysical methods, various types of testing, drilling, and a whole range of laboratory studies. We have five years from the acquisition of a licence to finish our work,’’ he said.
AGD Diamonds develops the Grib diamond field in the Arkhangelsk Province. Last year, the company extracted 22,150,000 cubic meters of rock mass from the Grib diamond mine recovering 4.5 million tons of ore.
Victoria Quiri, Correspondent of the European Bureau, Rough&Polished, Strasbourg
