As 2007 came to an end, oil prices were perched close to $100 a barrel and many market analysts were expecting prices could go beyond that in the New Year.

One commodities trader was gritty to make it come about, even if it meant probably maneuvering the market to snag bragging rights for executing the first trade ever for $100-a-barrel oil futures.

It ended up being a very costly trade. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Monday that it had arrived at a $12 million settlement on charges that a trader for the ConAgra Trade Group, a prominent commodities trading company that was at the time a part of ConAgra Foods, purposely executed a trade for an oil futures contract at “a non bona fide price.”

The incident that led to the charge of causing a non-bona fide price to be reported occurred on Jan. 2, 2008, as oil prices neared $100 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the CFTC said today in an e-mailed statement. ConAgra and the regulator settled the charges without admitting or denying wrongdoing, the CFTC said.

As prices neared the historic level, the ConAgra trader said he’s “just going to be a madman,” according to a transcript of the conversation in the CFTC order. When ConAgra accepted an offer to buy oil at $100 a barrel, another broker complained that he had a lower offer to sell oil at $99.90, according to the CFTC.

“At that point, CTG, in order to preserve the contract at the $100 price, disrupted the market by instructing its floor broker to buy all of the contracts then being offered on the floor” to push prices higher, the CFTC said. “Another of CTG’s traders stated that CTG’s only reason for buying the contracts at $99.90 was to be the first to trade at the $100 milestone.”