Fortuitously located in Western Australia between the Nifty, Woodie Woodie, Telfer, Havieron, and Winu. This is an area well recognised and tenure is secure. Access to tenure is typically through acquisition or earn-in. Fuse’s tenure represents a significant landholding of 1,325km², with 484km² as a granted exploration licence and 841km² under application.
Positioned next door to Cyprium (ASX:CYM) Nifty Mine – the Nifty Copper Deposit and Maroochydore Deposit to the southeast combine for resources of >2.6 Mt of Copper. Representing one of the largest copper development projects in Australia.
Recent deep seismic survey demonstrates favourable crustal architecture with splays off a mantle tapping detachment structure seemingly aligned with location of Woodie Woodie, Mt Sydney, Nifty, Telfer, and Havieron.
Could the eastern edge of the Archaean Pilbara Craton host an elusive giant VHMS deposit?
At 2.75Ga the projects volcanic rocks are indicative of a geological setting and age aligned to a proliferation of volcanic hosted massive sulphide deposits. To date the biggest discoveries, like Kidd Creek (138Mt) and the Noranda Deposits (combined 270Mt) are restricted to the Archaean rocks of Canada.
This area between Woodie Woodie and Nifty represents an immature search space. Driven across for decades but subject to surprisingly little dedicated exploration. Mid 1990’s saw first Newcrest and then Normandy attracted to the area. Despite reconnaissance style exploration demonstrating consistent base metal mineralisation in broadly distributed quartz veining, a lack of gold meant they walked away.
The most spectacular example of the mineralised quartz veining is located at the Bull Prospect, which was sampled by Newcrest, Siberia Mining Corporation, Northern Manganese, and Fuse returning up to 21.10% Copper (Cu), 27.20% Lead (Pb), 0.43% Zinc (Zn) and 640 g/t Silver (Ag).
Via ground truthing airborne electromagnetic survey (VTEM) conductors, Fuse identified base metal gossans at the Harrison and Chapman Prospects approximately 4km from the Bull Prospect. While also confirming and resampling many mineralised quartz veins.
Drilling at Harrison has demonstrated consistent iron/copper/zinc sulphides (+/- silver and lead) in a package of rhyodacite, andesite and basalt with narrow black shales supporting the interpretation of a Volcanic Hosted Massive Sulphide (VHMS) system. These rocks represent the upper units of the 2.75 Ga Hardey Formation; basal units are rhyolitic and transition to andesites and basalts.
The mineralised quartz veins appear lower in the Hardey Formation and geochemically match the sulphide mineralisation drilled at Harrison, suggesting a genetic relationship and pointing to a large hydrothermal system.
The Hardy Formation rocks are folded and plunge shallowly north where a cluster of VTEM conductors show no obvious signs of mineralisation at surface. This can be typical of VHMS systems where the overlying geology is deposited after the mineralisation and therefore not effected by the mineralising event. It is one reason geophysical techniques are utilised to generate drill targets in the search for VHMS deposits.
Finally, VHMS deposits often form in clusters, using the Noranda District as an example a total of 22 deposits combining for 270Mt of ore have been discovered in a 30 x 30km area. Within the 15km x 30km VTEM survey on E45/5585 25 conductors have been selected, including the Harrison Prospect where drilling has confirmed iron/copper/zinc sulphides with some lead and silver typical of these deposit types.
