Quick Shears Project
The Quick Shears Project is located on tenements contiguous Merlin Project where Buxton discovered an orthomagmatic Ni-Cu sulphide system in 2015. The Quick Shears Project includes the north-western continuation of the geological sequence that hosts the Merlin mineralisation (the Ruins Dolerite) so it is considered highly prospective for additional nickel-copper sulphide mineralisation. Buxton entered into an agreement to acquire an 80% interest in the key licenses E04/1972 and E04/2314 from New World Cobalt (ASX:BUX 6th November 2018).
It didn't take long before Buxton made another exciting discovery: fresh outcropping nickel-copper sulphides (Figure 1 & 2, ASX:BUX 28th May 2019).
Figure 1: Quick Shears Project tenements highlighing the Buxton's discovery of outcropping magmatic nickel copper sulphides
Figure 2: A sample from the Quick Shears Project discovery outcrop
The Quick Shears discovery increased the footprint of the Merlin mineralised system to over 7 kilometres (Figure 2). A large gravity high feature in the regional gravity is interpreted as a large package of intrusive mafic-ultramafic rocks (Figure 2), potentially being part of the Ruins Dolerite suite. Additional mapping and rock chip sampling, aircore drilling and low temperature SQUID ground EM was conducted in 2019.
The Quick Shears Project is currently managed by IGO Limited under a farm in agreement whereby, having paid AU$1,275,000 to BUX in March 2020, IGO has an 80% of BUX's 80% interest in these licenses (leaving BUX with a 16% trailing iterest). Additionally, 3 further $500,000 deferred cash payments are to be made on the satisfaction of relevent milestones (significant drilling results and declaration of JORC compliant resourses). For more information, see https://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20200124/pdf/44dhfyt543y51z.pdf.
For the 2020 field season, IGO has advised Buxton that they plan to conduct additional ground EM and ground truthing to prioritise follow-up drilling. A total of 13 EM targets have been identified from the current ground EM database (which includes the 2019 surveying by Buxton). Two of these targets (QS_7 and QS_10) were modelled outside the area of the existing MLEM survey. Additional targets have been identified by IGO’s 2019 Spectrem airborne EM survey which have also been earmarked for testing with ground EM surveying.
Figure 3: Ground EM coverage with modelled targets and Airborne EM targets