Inuvik (Feb 14/03) - With a diamond staking rush going on all over the North, there is also some new and renewed interest in diamond exploration in the Delta.

Vancouver-based Diamondex Resources Ltd. grew out of the small junior that was Winspear Resources who discovered and developed the Snap Lake project until De Beers bought them out in a hostile takeover in 2000.

President Randy Turner formed Diamondex as a grassroots company from an offering to Winspear shareholders before the De Beers takeover.

Diamondex has been granted 139 new prospecting permits totalling 6.15-million acres centred approximately 310 kilometres north of Norman Wells.

Turner said the new exploration could represent the discovery of one of the most significant new kimberlite fields since the Lac de Gras discovery of 1991.

"It's a geological model that we're working on," Turner said. "It looks very good from a diamond point of view."

Working with the same team that founded the Snap Lake project, Turner is confident the new exploration will yield some good results.

Diamondex has approved a $2-million budget for 2003, which includes a major sampling program and geophysical surveys for the delineation of drill targets.

The company holds a 100 per cent interest in 7,658,000 acres comprised of 15 diamond properties.

"We're still in the planning stages for the northern properties," Turner said.

"We will be doing sampling and geophysics."

"We are very enthused, not just with the properties up in your neck of the woods, but also with our projects in the South Slave," he said.

Darnley Bay

On the northern border of the Diamondex properties lies another hopeful Delta diamond project.

Leon La Prairie is president and CEO of Darnley Bay Resources Ltd.

He says since his company was incorporated in 1993, it has done approximately $16-million of work on the property.

The Darnley Bay property is located on one of the largest geological anomalies ever discovered.

"We know there's something causing the anomaly and it has to be heavy metals."

It has been almost two years since they've done any new work in the area, but La Prairie hopes to be starting exploration soon.

La Prairie has divided the area into separate projects -- beginning with diamond exploration in known kimberlite targets that they hope will also provide clues to what lies beneath.

"There are kimberlite targets that come right through the intrusive source that should bring sulphites near the surface," La Prairie said.

It's hoped that base metal fragments will be present in the kimberlite.

"We will be testing for both diamonds and base metals," he said. "This will give us an indication of what's causing the anomaly."

The metal fragments will be dated to determine how deep the resource is located.

"If we can get an age on those sulphites, we can relate them to where the formation lies," he said.

Following the core sampling, La Prairie said, they will do seismic tests on the area.

Darnley Bay will be issuing a private placement to raise the $2 million necessary to fund this next phase of the operation.