NickelX starts the ball rolling at Cosmos South exploration

NickelX is starting exploration at the Cosmos South project after receiving overwhelming shareholder approval for its acquisition.

The company has informed the vendors of its intention to exercise the option to acquire the project, which is located 10km south of the Cosmos Nickel operations and 20km north of BHP’s Leinster Nickel operations within the prolific Wiluna Greenstone Belt.

Under the option, NickelX (ASX:NKL) will earn a 100% interest in the project by undertaking exploration expenditure of not less than $500,000 over a 24-month period.

It will also be required to make milestone payments of $150,000 worth of NKL shares 12 months and 24 months from the date of the terms sheet.

The company has contracted Drone Geoscience to undertake a Drone Magnetic survey in the June quarter and Southern Geoscience Consultants to process the data to further map ultramafic rocks and identify drill targets.

Managing director Matt Gauci said that Cosmos South is ranked highly on the company’s target list and that the company’s exploration team was keen to get to drilling on the basis of geological interpretation, upgrading magnetics indicating ultramafic rocks and re-compiling very strong and large bedrock conductors.

Prospective nickel targets

Despite its close proximity to major nickel miners, Cosmos South and the M36/580 licence it is located in have received very limited exploration attention to date thanks to being almost entirely covered by alluvial deposits.

This is despite areas of outcropping-subcropping bedrock to its south and north undergoing considerable exploration that resulted in the discovery of nickel mineralisation.

NickelX’s reprocessing of historical surface electromagnetic data earlier this year had defined several geophysical targets at Cosmos South.

This includes a large, highly conductive feature less than 100m from surface that might extend south beyond the limits of the moving loom EM data coverage and is coincident with magnetic lineaments observed from regional aeromagnetic data over the project location.

NickelX has also flagged plans to start drilling shortly at the project.

This article was developed in collaboration with NickelX, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.