Buxton Resources says samples from its Sun Devil and Aztecs prospects in Arizona have revealed geochemical signatures indicating the sites lie above the main copper molybdenum-enriched zone of a typical porphyry system.
The 87 rock chip samples yielded results of up to 3.08 per cent copper, 156 parts per million molybdenum and 9.34 grams per tonne silver, strongly indicating the potential for a copper-porphyry target to exist at depth.
The two prospects that are now beckoning targets lie outside the main Copper Wolf project area, which Buxton holds in a joint venture (JV) with giant earn-in partner IGO. The company reported a month ago that mapping and sampling at its two 100 per cent-owned prospects on the western part of Copper Wolf had turned up intense quartz-iron oxide veining and potassic/phyllic assemblage alteration minerals typical of porphyry-copper mineral systems.
It had previously said the area it described as “exciting” was defined by a helicopter-supported exploration program and integration of new mapping, with historic exploration data at Sun Devil highlighting a “window” in the overlying volcanics that exhibited intense porphyry-style veining and alteration.
Buxton Resources chief executive officer Martin Moloney said: “This result confirms there are numerous, outcropping, undrilled exploration opportunities emerging at Copper Wolf and yet we've barely begun work. Buxton is continuing to undertake high-value & low-cost generative work that has delivered discovery after discovery.”
Sun Devil and Aztecs are defined by two zones of potassic and phyllic alteration, respectively, which are centred about 700m apart and each show intense copper-moly signatures in the outcropping prospective rocks. The rest – including between the two prospects – is overlain by recent volcanics.
The new results are in keeping with and go a long way towards confirming management’s field observations and justify further follow-up work. Despite Sun Devil seeming to be the biggest of the two targets and having the largest area of “window” exposure through the overlying geology, it has not been previously drilled.
Buxton says it has also kicked off a detailed drone-borne, low-level aeromagnetic survey over the north-eastern part of Copper Wolf, centred over Wolverine. It is about about 6km north-east of the Sun Devil-Aztecs area and the work will be comprised of 646 line kilometres at a line spacing of 30m in a bid to comprehensively map out the significant structures that may control porphyry mineralisation.
Results are expected early next month.
Despite the historically well-known prospectivity and production of the Arizona copper belt that extends all the way south into New Mexico and locally at Copper Wolf, Buxton says its 2022 airborne magnetic drone survey was the first geophysical survey undertaken there since the early 1960s and the area has not seen any drilling since the 1990s.
The company holds a 100 per cent interest in about 25.9 square kilometres of the Copper Wolf project ground and says it is targeting high-grade, underground or bulk mineable copper-moly mineralisation. It hopes to benefit from the huge advances in exploration geophysics, geochemistry, other technologies and mineral systems knowledge that have evolved since exploration in the area ceased decades ago.
Copper Wolf sits on the centre line of and in the northern part of the main cluster of well-known Arizona copper-belt projects, placing Buxton – and IGO – in a geologically-key location to be able to realise its objectives – especially with its latest encouraging suite of first-pass results.
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By Doug Bright
