It hasn’t been a great few days for BHP, the overweight Australian looking to shed excess baggage next year by spinning off its unloved – mostly African – assets into NewCo.

First off it was forced to admit that it hadn’t been able to flog its Nickel West operations, despite six months of marketing.

A day later it was revealed that BHP had shed 90 jobs after suspending development of its high-grade Venus nickel deposit, now seen as an unnecessary luxury as Nickel West tries to survive by treading water.

Then Credit Suisse did the sums on the two ASX-listed diversified mining giants and concluded that the commodity price downturn would challenge BHP much more than Rio Tinto.

The last development will really stick in BHP’s craw – it especially hates coming second to its smaller mining rival in anything, whether it is Pilbara iron ore costs, charitable spending, or even a chook raffle.

The CS conclusion does seem to go against the conventional wisdom held by mug punters such as the Metal Detective.

In Australia we’ve been very focused on the startling plunge in iron ore prices, and the two Pilbara majors’ pugnacious attempts to kill off higher cost rivals by flooding the market.

And we all know that Rio Tinto is much more reliant on iron ore than its more diversified competitor.

But the problem for BHP’s much-touted “spreading the risk” strategy at present is that most of its markets have fallen out of bed at the same time.

Among the worst is crude oil – one of BHP’s “four pillars” - which is down about 25% this year as a glut of supply continues to weigh on prices.

Put simply, Rio Tinto benefits from a lower oil price, BHP does not, given its broad exposure to the commodity, including a big US shale gas portfolio.

“At spot oil and US gas prices, we estimate US onshore free cashflow of just $US200 million in FY 2016,” Credit Suisse says.

And of course BHP’s oil revenues become even more important after the parent sheds NewCo next year.

The demerger will rip out an estimated $500 million-a-year from the parent (at current spot prices) that would normally be available to fund dividend cheques and other essentials such as executive bonuses and the annual golf day.

Barring a sharp pullback in capital spending, BHP would need to borrow money by 2016 just to meet its progressive dividend policy, with the payout ratio expected to creep near 100%.

By contrast, Rio Tinto would have about $1 billion in free cashflow and a payout ratio of just 65% - easily managed, according to CS, which has an “outperform” on Rio against a “neutral” on BHP.

If spot prices don’t budge, it may lead to an unenviable dilemma for BHP – cut dividends or suffer an embarrassing downgrade of its credit rating.

The recent investor demands for fatter dividends are a relatively new thing for the mining sector, which was traditionally viewed as a capital growth punt rather than an income play.

“What is interesting about this downturn is that it looks like the diversifieds' dividend payout ratios will be sustained at higher rates – and this implies less reinvestment,” CS said.

“This will probably be the thing that eventually brings about the next run in commodity prices. Some things never change.”

The next “run” may take a long time in the case of iron ore, however, which seems stubbornly wedged in the $75-80/t range.

So, where does that leave Fortescue Metals Group, which is 100% exposed to the steel-making commodity?

At last week’s annual meeting, both CEO Nev Power and chairman Andrew Forrest deflected questions on whether the company might need to cut dividends to keep their debt repayment schedule intact.

The Nev and Twiggy show also seemed blithely indifferent to any balance sheet pressures created by low prices.

Broker Patersons Securities seems to share their confidence, despite shaving its long term forecast for the iron ore price from $90/t to $85/t.

“FMG offers strong leverage to iron ore prices and, despite its relatively high gearing levels, is more robust than the other stocks in our universe with lower production costs and a more meaningful production profile (too big to fail),” Patersons said.

Of course BHP is also far too big to fail.

Yet having failed to sell Nickel West, just as oil and iron ore prices leak badly, means it will struggle to shake the “loser” tag.