Eike Batista, a Brazilian mining entrepreneur, says he owes the success of his business, built from scratch and now worth billions, to following the basic rules of mining exploration that he learned as a young man digging for gold. "In mining, you go to some crazy place, you set up a camp, you start looking for water and energy and this way you can build anything," Batista said. "That's the mind-set. That's my life. That's how I learned to build things from zero." Batista, 51, is about to complete the sale of two iron ore projects to Anglo American for $5.5 billion. That would still leave him with 700 million tons of iron ore reserves, a bauxite project, ports, power plants, a water company and his latest exploratory passion - oil and natural gas. Another of Batista's talents is the meticulous recruiting of top-notch geologists and managers, to whom he offers equity in his enterprises to give them an incentive to deliver great results. Executives at Brazil's two leading companies - the mining giant Vale do Rio Doce and Petrobr