This topic comes by way of fellow blogger, Okiedoke.
Buying gas on credit? Then you are contributing to high fuel prices at the pump, says Exxon station owner Paul O’Connell.
“The banks are making a killing,” said O’Connell, who is also executive director of the Billerica-based New England Service Station and Automotive Repair Association. O’Connell spoke to legislators yesterday during a hearing about gasoline prices for the Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy.

He said credit-card companies have increased fees for gas stations that allow customers to use credit cards to pay for gasoline.
O’Connell says the companies have doubled their fee from 4.5 cents per gallon to 9 cents per gallon of gas.
“The credit-card companies are making almost as much as the oil companies,” Dampolo said. “On our end, we mostly have a loss of profits. … Four years ago, I was making more money selling at 89 cents a gallon than I am today.”
But surely credit card companies alert you to that fact in your monthly statements. I know how big they are on encouraging responsible use of credit. Too bad it isn’t part of a disclosure provision in the new bankruptcy law. Oh that’s right, that law was for bankers only.
As I watched the gas prices going up again in the last day or so, I kept thinking that someone is making a killing from these rises and falls. I know it's not the gas station owners — they are the unfortunate business people caught in the middle, being squeezed by their suppliers, the marketplace (competition) and now, it appears, the credit card companies.

The credit card industry lobbied Congress heavily to get their legislation passed that made it more difficult for consumers to file bankruptcy because they claimed it was hurting their business. Ignore the fact that they too are making record profits, just like the oil companies.

Next time you hear a Republican congressperson or senator try to convince you that they stand up for the average American, don't be duped again. The policies in the last four-plus years continually support big business on the backs of their REAL constitutents — the American taxpayer. But that's a topic for another thread.

Anyway, you can add the credit card industry as another looter in this gas crisis.