Canada: What future for BC’s offshore oil and gas?

Given the historically high stakes, and given how necessary it now is for America to retain access to secure sources of overseas energy, how likely is it that Washington would respect Victoria’s decision to continue denying exploitation of off-shore oil and gas reserves, if and when the world security situation for Americans tightens to the point where energy flows to US companies and consumers can no longer be assured? If military provocation with Iran, for example, leads Iran to sink just one ship in the Straights of Hormuz, thereby completely closing the Persian Gulf shipping passage to oil tanker traffic, which would immediately shut down about 25% of global oil delivery overnight, would BC public desires to retain the moratorium against oil and gas drilling off the coast be respected?
Noting the ferocity of threats leveled at new US friend Pakistan to assure that country’s cooperation with US plans for war on Afghanistan, as recently revealed by Pakistani president Musharaf, and given threats to long-time allies Germany and France to secure acquiescence to US plans for war on Iraq (also formally a close friend), there is little reason to suppose a recalcitrant BC government would be treated differently if it rejected US access to offshore fields. Noting the Canadian government response to BC’s closing of US access to the Nanoose Bay torpedo range in 1999, by expropriating the region and reassuring Washington it would never again lose access, we can be pretty sure that diplomatic contact between Ottawa and Washington would assure US access to BC offshore oil and gas reserves, no matter what the BC government says or does. It is utterly conceivable, and totally in line with the historical trajectory of US deployments of military power, to imagine that Ottawa’s lack of cooperation in putting down a BC revolt on constitutional grounds would be met with rapid deployment of US forces to BC, if not Ottawa as well, and the whole nation in between.

The Republic of East Vancouver