Pickens Says China Purchases Are Leading to $90 Oil (Bloomberg) — Billionaire hedge-fund manager T. Boone Pickens said Chinese purchases will help push up crude-oil prices to as much as $90 a barrel next year as output declines and the global economy rebounds. Next year’s average oil price will be $80 a barrel, 39 percent more than the average so far this year, Pickens said today in an interview on CNBC. China has spent $200 billion on forward purchases, “tying up” the world’s oil suppl