The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that,

“China has promised to lend $20 billion to Venezuela, the country’s President Hugo Chávez said over the weekend, underscoring the Asian giant’s push to deepen ties to oil-rich nations in the developing world.”

Last week, testifying to the Ways & Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, T. Boone Pickens warned the Members of Congress that China was using state-owned banks to finance oil deals around the world for its state-owned oil industry and it was not a level playing field. Boone said that in some cases China is providing loans “which will be repaid with future oil deliveries.”

As if to prove Boone correct, the Journal report, written by Dan Molinski and John Lyons, confirms:

“China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said the $20 billion in ‘soft loans’ would be provided by state-owned China Development Bank.”

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, according to the reporting of Molinski and Lyons, said

“the money … would be repaid with Venezuelan crude oil. Mr. Chávez already has received, and spent, some $8 billion from China in recent years, which the nation has been paying back with crude oil.”

The authors make the point that Pickens has been attempting to drive home since he began the Pickens Plan in August 2008:

“China is deepening ties with resource-producing nations around the globe to fuel its rapid growth. But its rising appetite for oil is a top concern. While China is mainly powered on coal, oil demands have soared in recent years. Oil supply is now a crucial Chinese energy priority, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.”

Pickens told the House Ways & Means Committee that a major weapon in the U.S. energy arsenal in the global rush to tie up future oil supplies is the enormous amount of natural gas available in North America.

That natural gas, according to Pickens and his 1.6 million Americans who are members of the Pickens Plan, should be used by Americans in America.

Pickens called for the Committee to move the NAT GAS Act (H.R. 1835) to the floor, saying the U.S. government should immediately begin providing tax incentives for heavy trucks and other fleets to begin replacing vehicles running on dirty, expensive imported diesel and gasoline, with trucks running on cheaper, cleaner domestic natural gas.

— The Pickens Team