Chris Cline

At 60 years old, Chris Cline has this physical status:

Chris Cline (July 5, 1958 – July 4, 2019) was an American billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist.

He had been the majority owner of Foresight Reserves LP, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.

Regarded by Bloomberg as having been the "New King Coal", Cline was considered to have been responsible for reviving the Illinois coal industry.

His company has more than three billion tons of coal reserves across Illinois and the Northern Appalachian Mountains.

Early life

Cline was born in Beckley, West Virginia, on July 5, 1958. Cline's father was Paul Cline. Cline's mother was Lassie Justice Cline.

Cline's grandfather mined for coal with a pickaxe around Beckley, West Virginia, in the early 20th century. At the age of six, Cline's father, Paul, asked him to fill a paper bag with dirt, paying him a penny for each bag. Cline dug the dirt from under the porch of their bungalow in Isaban, West Virginia. His father used the dirt bags in mine-blasting. Within two years, their porch had collapsed. According to Cline, his father had told him to "support the roof better". In 1980, Cline's father bought out his partner then gave the shares to Cline, who was then 21 years old.

Education

Cline studied psychology at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.

Personal life

Cline's first wife was Sabrina J. Holley Cline. They had a daughter, Candice. In September 1987, Cline's first wife died from breast cancer. She was 28 years old. In 1993, Cline married Kelly, his second wife. In 2000, Cline divorced Kelly Cline. Cline had two sons and two daughters, Christopher Logan Cline, Alex Tanner Cline, and Kameron Cline.

In 2011, Cline's daughter Candice, a director of a foundation, married James Graham Kenan.

Cline owned a 33,413-square-foot (3,104.2 m2) mansion in North Palm Beach, Florida, and a home in his native Beckley, West Virginia, with a 150-acre (61 ha) property. Cline was a charter member of Brenton Southern Baptist Church.

Cline also had a relationship with Elin Nordegren, ex-wife of golfer Tiger Woods.

Cline owned two megayachts that he christened "Mine Games". The first was a 164-footer built by Trinity Yachts, delivered in 2008. He sold the yacht in 2013, later purchasing another 205-foot (62 m) larger luxury yacht that he also christened "Mine Games". Mine Games, which had five staterooms and its own submarine, was designed and built by Italy-based Benetti in 2010. Cline sold the yacht in the fall of 2018.

In 2015, Jasper Reserves, LLC, owned by Cline, donated one million dollars to Super PACs supporting the presidential candidacy of Jeb Bush.

On August 20, 2012, Vivek Shah was arrested for the attempted extortion of Chris Cline, Harvey Weinstein, and three other individuals. On or around June 26, 2012, Shah threatened to kill members of Cline's family if $13 million was not wired to an offshore bank account. A seven-count felony indictment against Shah was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in September 2012, and in 2013 he was sentenced to seven years in prison.

On July 4, 2019, Cline died in a helicopter crash in Grand Cay, Bahamas. He was 60 years old.

Other people also died with Cline, including his 22-year-old daughter Kameron and her three friends (Brittney Searson, Jillian Clark and Delaney Wykle). They were traveling back from Bahamas to the United States on an emergency trip to an American hospital after Kameron and one of her friends fell ill. The other casualties were golfer David Jude and the aircraft's pilot, Geoffrey Lee Painter, an ex-Royal Air Force pilot from Barnstaple, United Kingdom.

In a 2021 report, the National Transportation Safety Board determined that the two pilots chose to take off, likely feeling pressured by Cline, despite dark conditions and lack of visual references over water. They became spatially disorientated and crashed into the sea.

In 2014, Chris Cline Athletic Complex, an indoor football practice facility at Marshall University, was dedicated for Cline.

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Career

Cline became an underground miner in 1980 and founded the Cline Group, an energy development firm. In 2006, he formed Foresight Energy to control his Illinois Basin coal rights. The New York Stock Exchange opened Foresight Energy on January 4, 2014. In 2015, Cline sold the majority of his Foresight stake for $1.4 billion.

Illinois has a 250-year coal supply, giving the state the country's biggest recoverable coal reserve. With coal mining operations locating in 12 counties, the state consumed nearly $1.4 billion in 2017. However, Illinois coal is also too high in sulfur to be used by the majority of power plants due to pollution control regulations. Cline, who invested $300 million on mining rights and equipment in Illinois in the 1990s, was disappointed that the US Environmental Protection Agency would require power plants to use scrubbers to remove pollutants, which would bring coal back to profitability for electricity generation.

Cline Group's Williamson longwall mining operation south of West Frankfort, Illinois, was established in 2005.

In 2008, SNL Financial, a division of Cline's Hillsboro Energy LLC, reported that the Deer Run coal mine in Montgomery County, Illinois, which is a project of Cline's Hillsboro Energy LLC, would grow up to eight million tonnes annually until 2016. Cline's representatives said in the same study that he was aiming for 60 million tonnes of annual coal production from his Illinois operations.

Environmental activists and landowners in Illinois attempted to prevent Cline's coal mining activities, as well as publicizing his local political contributions.

After selling off Foresight stock and rights to coal reserves in Western Canada, Cline acquired a Nova Scotia metallurgical coal mine.

In a 2010 interview, Cline defended coal as a source of low-cost electricity, saying, "I like to think I'm part of supplying the cheapest electricity in America."

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