I really enjoyed this article on Alan Greenspan, told from his point of view, even laughed out loud a couple of times:
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/daily/2006/0120.html

Others say that my real legacy is that I finally "made central banking work." Yes, I made it work...just like it's supposed to work, giving the people enough rope so they could hang themselves. That's what they've done. Now, they dangle from a long rope of mortgages, deficits and credit cards.

And I am delighted. Soon, people will be able to see how central banking really works. And poor Ben Bernanke will get the blame for it. He and his stupid helicopters...he almost deserves it.

1)If you buy a futures contract expiring in 2012, you dont have to hold it until that date to take profits/losses/delievery - you can get out anyday and your equity is marked to market everyday. The force majeure event that you imply would likely not happen overnight, though I guess 'one' overnight it will.

2) The futures strip for oil out to 2012 has its highest price in January 2007 at $70.16 gradually declining to $63.10 in 2012. source nymex.com This implies that either a) the 'market' believes that new production after 2007 will offset depletion b) demand will be lower after 2007 c) long dated futures are so illiquid as to not be true voting mechanisms for large dollars (if someone could buy 1 billion$ worth of 2012 futures they would, but even buying $500,000 worth is hard to do) d)the market (and society) predominantly only looks 1 quarter to one year ahead in pricing e) that from 2008 to 2012 our liquid energy will be provided increasingly by ethanol, biodiesel, coal-to-liquids, tar sands etc.  

It could be a combination of all of the above but I beleive most likely a combination of a) and e). What the market is missing is that these new energy sources are borrowing from Peter to pay Paul (tar sands require nat gas, biodiesel takes away some food production etc). Thoughts welcomed.

3) We keep hearing about how US natural gas futures have plummeted. Indeed they are down 50% from their highs of a few months ago due to VERY mild weather (55 in vermont today). But if one uses the NYMEX strip and takes the AVERAGE of all monthly futures prices over the next 6 years (not just the front months this winter), one discovers that natural gas has actually increased 11% in the last 2 months (even while the financial news media has pointed out that NG plummeted from $15.75 to $8.90). Long dated structural problem is being recognized - 2010 futures strip is up 25.5% from its November 2005 levels (when NG front month was over $15). In other words, averaging the entire futures strip of natural gas futures shows that this aggregate closed at an all time high yesterday.  Interested in Freddy and others thoughts here...

You should also be discounting your price by the time-value of the money and goods involved.  Ignoring the risk of a default for the moment, if you can make 5% on your $60 -- and you can get a five-year 5% CD today -- then if you're willing to pay $60 today for a barrel of oil in five years, you're betting that the price then will be more than $76.58, not that it will be more than $60.  If you believe the price will be less than $76.58, you're ahead to buy the CD now and use the proceeds to buy the oil in five years.  Include a 10% chance that the seller will default on the contract and you get nothing, then your $60 today is a bet that the price will actually be above $85.09.

Of course, that's using simple-minded calculations for the expected value of the future good you get for $60 today.  You can make the model as complicated as you want.  Still, the bottom line for me is that today's $60 price for oil five years out translates into "the market" expecting prices >$75/bbl by then.