11.   That would be enough today to tip the oil price into free-fall unless the Saudis and other cartel members were to reduce their output correspondingly.

12.   The charges against Mr. Ferguson include paying off cartel members to dissuade them from cooperating with the government in gathering evidence against cartel leaders.

13.   The indictment says that he knowingly induced members of the cartel jailed in the United States to sign false affidavits to make extraditing other cartel members more difficult.

14.   The men were top officials in three trade associations that prosecutors asserted were used to allocate customers and exact payoffs from independent carters who competed with cartel members.

15.   The prosecution said it would present testimony that cartel members were involved in the firebombing of a Chambers truck and the beating of an employee.

16.   The third lawyer, William Moran, is accused, among other things, of arranging bail for cartel members he knew would flee.

17.   The undercover detective secretly taped meetings with suspected mobsters and carters accused of being cartel members.

18.   The White House said Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who recently visited Middle Eastern oil states, would continue to lobby cartel members to increase production.

19.   They can also afford to start being good cartel members, doing their bit to drive prices up still further.

20.   They said the two jailed cartel members, Enrique Arroyave and Carlos Marcantoni, who have been federal witnesses in several cocaine cases, separately told strikingly similar stories.