Brazil's Eike Fuhrken Batista is the world of mining's richest man and has been on a roll so far this year, increasing his wealth by a third according to Bloomberg data .
But he took a few blows to the body on Tuesday.
After his oil and gas firm OGX – one of five public companies under Batista's control – disappointed with reserve figures of only 110 million barrels at an offshore well called Tubarão-Azul or Blue Shark the company was beaten down 7.8%.
That decline and a generally bad day on the world's stock markets meant $1,023,200,000 disappeared from Batista's personal fortune on Tuesday.
Batista is now down to his last $30 billion and is in danger of dropping out of the top 10 if commodity stocks continue to slide. (The three who could catch Batista – Wal-Mart's Walton siblings – only lost $100 million on Tuesday.)
A much more encouraging find on land by another Batista business could not reverse the steep declines.
CCX, Batista’s coal unit, also announced today that it discovered a 672 million tonnes reserve, making it the fifth largest coal deposit in the world, at San Juan in Colombia.
CCX is being spun off and will list separately on the Sao Paulo exchange on May 25.
Perhaps having a sixth publicly traded entity will help Batista cobble together another billion or so.
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