Billionaire U.S. Coal Baron Chris Cline Dies in Helicopter Crash [View all]

Christopher Cline, the billionaire coal tycoon best known for reviving Illinois’s mining industry and making a fortune doing it, died in a helicopter crash Thursday.

Cline died in an accident off the coast of the Bahamas that also killed six other people, Brian Glasser, an attorney who represented Cline, said by telephone. He was the founder of St. Louis, Missouri-based coal miner Foresight Energy LP, a joint venture with Robert Murray’s Murray Energy Corp.

Cline, who died a day shy of his 61st birthday, was born into coal. His grandfather dug up the rock with a pickaxe, and he himself started working the mines at 22. Ten years later, he founded the Cline Group to extract coal from beneath the hollows and rolling hills of Appalachia. He created Foresight to expand into Illinois in 2006. At its peak, the company was valued at more than $2.6 billion.

“Chris Cline built an empire and on every occasion was always there to give,” West Virginia Governor -- and fellow coal miner -- Jim Justice said on Twitter.

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-05/billionaire-u-s-coal-baron-chris-cline-dies-in-helicopter-crash