If you hear a strange noise off in the distance, it's probably the strangled cries of your neighbors as they open their heating bills.

        “Ugggggh! is an understatement,” Mark Carey of Conshohocken, Pa., said. “My gas rates went up 38 percent. I feel sorry for the folks in Philadelphia — their rates went up 50 percent.”

        And then there's Richard Marto of Camden, Tenn., whose gas bill doubled. “My only safe haven is that I have money in Fidelity Select Natural Gas,” he said. The fund has soared 39 percent the past 12 months versus a 1.6 percent loss for the average stock fund.

        Will a natural resources fund be a good investment now that everyone on earth knows that oil and gas prices are sky-high?

        Using hindsight, gasoline looked cheap in January 1999, when a gallon cost an average 98 cents, less than a gallon of bottled water. It doesn't look cheap now. But it's unlikely that energy prices, particularly natural gas prices, will fall much in the next 12 to 18 months, experts say. And that means natural resources funds should continue to steam.

        Natural gas sells on the spot-commodity market for about $5.60 per million cubic feet, up from about $2.30 two years ago.

        The good news for consumers: Thanks to some warming weather and cooling speculative fervor, the price of natural gas on the commodities market has dropped nearly in half from its peak of $9.98 in December, according to Joe Sterling, manager of American Century Global Natural Resources.

        But don't look for prices to slide back below $3, said Andrew Pilara, manager of RS Global Natural Resources. His reasoning:

        About 20 percent of all natural gas wells are depleted in a year. So drillers have to replace 20 percent of natural gas wells annually to keep production level.

        “It's the Red Queen effect,” Mr. Pilara said. (In Alice in Wonderland, the Red Queen tells Alice, “It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.”) The rate is 35 percent on the Gulf Coast, said Borden Putnam, a principal at RS Investment Management.

        Barring a major discovery elsewhere, depletion rates should hold steady. All the older fields were large and easy to find. New ones are shallower and harder to find.

        About 90 percent of all new electrical generation plants will use natural gas, so demand should continue to rise, even in the sum mer. “Wait until you see the air-conditioning demand this summer,” Mr. Pilara said. “California's problems could be transported to the Midwest.”

        Don't count on imports to ease the situation. Unlike oil, natural gas is difficult to transport. A leak in an oil tanker, after all, is an ecological disaster. A leak in a liquid natural gas tanker could put the first refinery on the moon.

        And what about oil? “Oil has a rigged price,” Mr. Pilara said. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries essentially controls the price, and OPEC will probably keep oil around $25 a barrel.

        Now, it's not likely that the jump in oil and natural gas prices has gone unnoticed by investors. Has Wall Street already bid energy stocks to stupid levels? “I just came back from an energy conference, and the prevailing mood was buoyant,” said Roger Mortimer, manager of AIM Global Resources. That's not usually the atmosphere you find when you're picking up bargains.

        But most experts argue that energy stocks haven't gotten goofy yet, because investors have had long, hard experience with oil and gas companies in the past two decades. They haven't bid prices up too far, because they have been burned too often.

        “The gas stocks are reflecting (natural) gas at $3.50,” said Michael Hoover, manager of Excelsior Energy and Natural Resources. Investors have remained cautious.

        AIM's Mortimer likes companies that get gas (and oil) out of the ground. “It's never been a better time to be a production company,” he said. So he favors companies such as Apache (APA) and Anadarko Petroleum (APC).

        Mr. Pilara and Mr. Putnam favor companies such as Williams Cos. (WMB) and BJ Services (BJS), both of which help move natural gas from the wellhead and around the country.

        More conservative investors might consider Murphy Oil (MUR), a major oil company, or Chevron (CHV), Mr. Pilara said.

        John Tozzi, CEO of San Francisco-based Cambridge Investments, thinks drilling is the place to be. “The only answer in the next two or three years has to be the drill bit,” he said. He, too, favors BJ Services, but also likes midsize companies such as Cooper Cameron (CAM), which makes oil-rig equipment, and Smith International (SII), which makes drill bits.

        You shouldn't put too much of your portfolio into any one sector or stock. Nevertheless, it might be worthwhile to sit by the fire, toss in a chair leg or two, and study energy funds more closely.

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