Service Stations

MasterCard Worldwide said it would establish a cap on the fees gas stations pay to clear consumer credit cards and would publish a complete list of its so-called interchange fees, which merchants pay for the processing of card transactions. The move comes as a number of retail groups have filed class-action suits against MasterCard, Visa USA and a number of major banks over interchange fees. The merchants pay those fees indirectly as a component of fees charged to them by their banks.

Chevron Corp. said Friday that it would buy most of the gasoline stations owned by USA Petroleum Corp., the California independent retailer believed to have invented self-service fueling in the 1940s. Privately owned USA Petroleum, based in Thousand Oaks, plans to sell 122 of its 160 stations -- amounting to nearly all of its California network, USA Petroleum President Mark Conant said. All but a handful of the affected stations sell fuel under the USA name.

State-owned Citgo Petroleum Corp. has decided to stop distributing gasoline to 1,800 independently owned U.S. stations, shedding a lackluster segment of its business while forcing the owners of those stations to find other suppliers. While it may create some logistical headaches for station owners in the short term, the move was not expected to have any effect on the nation's overall fuel supply.

If you think paying $3.50 for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. is a hardship, consider Mexico, where motorists are really getting stiffed. Nine in 10 gasoline stations in Mexico have rigged their pumps to dispense less than what their meters promise, according to federal authorities, who calculated that purloined petrol cost consumers at least $1 billion last year.

If the United States is going to end its addiction to oil, the filling station of the future might look like Pearson Ford Fuel Depot in San Diego. Along with gasoline and diesel, the one-of-a-kind station -- part of a dealership near busy Interstate 15 -- offers a full range of clean-burning alternative fuels including ethanol, propane and BioWillie, a brand of biodiesel made from soybeans and promoted by country music legend Willie Nelson. The station isn't profitable yet.

California needs stronger laws to prevent price-gouging by big oil companies, not just service-station owners, top Democratic officials said Thursday. Prosecutors should get greater power to investigate oil refiners and wholesalers when pump prices rise much faster than the cost of crude oil, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) said. He is sponsoring legislation that would make it easier for the governor and attorney general to counter market manipulators. Nunez and Atty. Gen.

Lured by a discount of 6 cents a gallon, Erin Farrow drove past a Chevron station to pump $50 of no-name gas into her Ford Explorer one day last week. She certainly wasn't drawn by the ambience at O'Brien Station in northern San Diego County. And two weeks earlier, the nurse from nearby San Marcos probably wouldn't have stopped at all because O'Brien's price was 20 cents a gallon higher than at the Chevron and an Exxon outlet not too far away.

In January, an earnest woman named Kim Cooper was driving through Lincoln Heights when her neighborhood gas station caught her eye. The station's familiar 76 insignia, its stocky blue numbers splashed against a sea of orange, had been supplanted with a sign that looked like, well, everywhere else. The new 76 was set against a backdrop of red, and a boring red at that -- "a queasy color," she recalled with a grimace, "like liver."

Hidden amid a sea of asphalt, heavy machinery and city buildings is Riverside's only fueling station where the stench of gasoline is a thing of the past. The station dispenses what city officials and the South Coast Air Quality Management District hope will be the fuel of the future: hydrogen. Riverside's hydrogen station is part of a project sponsored by the AQMD to test the practicability of hydrogen fueling stations and hydrogen-powered cars on California's roads.

President Bush on Saturday telephoned nine U.S. service members at their posts from Japan to the Persian Gulf to recognize their service to the nation and wish them holiday cheer. Placing the calls from his mountaintop presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., Bush talked to eight men and one woman, a Coast Guard member stationed in the Persian Gulf. "The president wished them a Merry Christmas and thanked them for their service to our country," said White House spokesman Allen Abney.