The Los Angeles Times today runs down the list of California’s major oil refiners, which are also California’s biggest individual carbon emitters, and finds Tesoro, Valero, and Koch Industries  have not brought along their industry brethren in the fight to stop AB 32 with Proposition 23.

Prop 23 would suspend the 2006 law until the state’s unemployment rate drops to 5.5% or below and stays there for a year, something that’s happened three times in the last four decades, depending on how you count.

But seven weeks before the election, Margot Roosevelt’s tally for the Times reveals that:

– Chevron is officially neutral

– ConocoPhillips has yet to contribute

– Shell Oil opposes Proposition 23

– BP has not taken a position on the initiative

– ExxonMobil has decided not to get involved

Chevron, headquartered in San Ramon, is one of only two California-based big oil companies. The other one, Occidental of Los Angeles, is on board with a $300,000 donation of record to the Prop 23 campaign. Spokesman Richard Kline wrote me in an e-mail:

“The implementation of AB 32 would hit California with over a million lost jobs and substantially higher energy prices. Implementing it in the teeth of the most significant recession in the last 60 years would be foolhardy and negatively impact every one of us who live and work in our state…”

Beyond that, he recommend I speak with Anita Mangels of the Yes-on-23 campaign.  I have, and part of that conversation will air in an upcoming feature on Proposition 23, to air on The California Report.

The Times, by the way, also got hold of an e-mail appeal from the president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Assn., literally begging for contributions to the “Yes” campaign. According to the Times, it read, in part: “I am pleading with each of you — for our nation’s best interest and for your company’s own self-interest.” The Refiners Association, which has ponied up $100,000 so far, claims that the initiative could “mean the difference between life and death for our industry in this century…. AB32 would have the effect of outlawing petroleum-based fuels in California in the second half of this century.”

Interesting, since a major talking point of the “Yes” campaign lately has been to dwell on the things Prop 23 would not outlaw. In his email to me, Occidental’s Kline took pains to add:

“Under the California Jobs Initiative [proponents’ name for Prop 23], California’s environmental laws – which are among the toughest in the nation – will remain intact. Those laws already protect our air and water from smog-forming emissions and other pollutants related to human and environmental health and they will remain in full force and effect.”