Introduction
New Boston augments the Company’s blue-sky exploration strategy of applying new exploration technologies and modern mineral deposit modeling to large-footprint but underexplored porphyry copper systems in Nevada. The company will leverage the experience gained from exploration on its Bonita and Junction properties located in north-central Nevada to advance the large and fully zoned, porphyry-skarn-breccia system exposed along approximately 4 km of strike of sheeted copper-moly-silver veins at New Boston.
Nevada has both history and pedigree in the world of porphyry copper and moly. New Boston is located in a long and well-established belt of Cretaceous-aged porphyry systems that runs northwest-southeast in west-central Nevada. It is located between the past-producing Yerington porphyry copper camp located approximately 100 km to the northwest, and the Cretaceous Hall moly-copper deposit located approximately 100 kilometres to the southeast.
The New Boston porphyry-skarn mineral system comes to surface. Mineralized sheeted quartz veins in both quartz monzonite plugs and dykes and in country rock Paleozoic limestone over a strike length of approximately 4 kilometres.
Artisanal mining at the turn of the century focused on high grade W-Mo-Cu-Ag skarns at the west end of the system at the Blue Ribbon Mine. Copper-moly porphyry-style stockwork mineralization in the central part of the system at Jeep Mine was the focus of exploration starting in the late 1960’s and extending to 1981, followed by drilling for shallow, skarn-related tungsten mineralization on the western flank of Jeep Mine in the mid-1980’s.
In summary, expert porphyry exploration teams within the mineral divisions of big oil companies active in the mineral sector during that era discovered and outlined a large and fully zoned porphyry – skarn system at surface at New Boston. However, that work came to a full-stop in 1981 at New Boston, and across much of North America for that matter. The center of the mineral system at New Boston was inferred but never discovered. Further, the work did not include systematic geochemistry from either surface samples or drill core to define the copper-moly-silver signature of the large-footprint system.
Plan Going Forward in 2023
VR’s goal is straight forward: to simply complete the expert-level exploration for that era that was started at New Boston in the 1960’s, but never finished. VR’s goal is two-fold: to confirm and discover both the true size and the actual copper-silver-moly signature of the large polymetallic system at New Boston by. The opportunity for VR to reach that goal is clear: 1. use state-of-the-art exploration technologies not previously available to augment the historic exploration maps to identify the high temperature center of the system and the location of a source mineralized porphyry stock, and; 2. apply current mineral deposit models specific to porphyry systems in western North America as a framework to interpret new geophysical data collected at New Boston.
VR has the experience in Nevada and expertise in mineral exploration to advance New Boston. Work done to date includes:
- Integration of all regional geoscience data available for the area with all historic exploration data for New Boston obtained during the acquisition of the property;
- Mapping of vein and dyke geometries across the entire property, summer 2022.
VR has scoped out three advanced technology geophysical surveys for New Boston, planned for the first half of 2023. The goal is to augment the exploration vector maps for the entire mineral system that were developed in the 1970’s, and in so doing, plan a new fence of drill holes to test for the high temperature center of the mineral system, and for the source porphyry stocks inferred by the historic exploration. VR has experience with all of the service providers for the planned work summarized below, and their data sets:
- Fixed-wing airborne hyperspectral survey, to map alteration minerals and alteration intensity at surface across the entire mineral system at New Boston;
- ultra-high resolution, drone-based airborne magnetic survey to map alteration and identify potential centers at depth within the country rock limestone at New Boston for mineralized porphyry stocks or dykes and;
- grid-based, 3-D array DCIP survey (ground-based IP geophysics) to map sub-surface sulfide intensity at New Boston in order to identify the high temperature center with the strongest potential for the highest grades of copper.
Modern ICP-MS geochemical techniques will be used on continuous sampling from a new fence of drill holes designed from the afore-mentioned work in order to discover: 1. the high temperature porphyry center responsible for the up-dip expression of the system in sheeted porphyry dykes and veins in limestone at surface, and; 2. the true copper-silver-moly character of the large polymetallic system, both vertically and laterally.
The upside of discovering and defining a new copper-moly-silver porphyry system at New Boston from this work is underscored by: 1. the potential for a large mineral volume based on the sheer size of the system both laterally and vertically, and; 2. location, which facilitates cost-effective exploration and positively impacts project development metrics.
