Been noticing a lot of chatter about energy exposure lately, and honestly, it makes sense given everything happening globally. The geopolitical situation has really put pressure on oil and energy supplies, and crude prices have stayed elevated because of it. This is creating some interesting opportunities in the energy sector if you know where to look.

If you're thinking about adding energy exposure to your portfolio, mutual funds are one way to play it without picking individual stocks. There are some solid top energy mutual funds worth considering, especially if you're looking at a longer time horizon.

One that keeps coming up is Fidelity Select Energy Portfolio. This fund spreads its bets across the whole energy landscape—oil, gas, coal, but also newer stuff like solar and geothermal. They do fundamental analysis on each company before investing. Looking at the historical data from a couple years back, it showed around 9.1% annualized returns over three years. They were holding about 35 different positions, with a significant chunk in Exxon Mobil.

Then there's Invesco SteelPath MLP Select 40, which takes a different angle by focusing on master limited partnerships. These are basically infrastructure plays in the energy space—transportation, storage, processing. The returns on this one were more impressive from what I saw, hitting 25.4% annualized over that same three-year period. Stuart Cartner has been managing it for years now.

The third one getting attention is Fidelity Natural Resources Fund. This one casts a wider net beyond just energy into natural resources and precious metals. The three-year annualized returns were around 14.3%, and the expense ratio was pretty reasonable at 0.69%.

Obviously, past performance doesn't guarantee future results, and these numbers are from a while back. But if you're serious about building energy exposure, these are the kind of top energy mutual funds that have shown they can deliver. The volatility in energy markets probably isn't going away anytime soon, which means opportunities will keep appearing for investors who position themselves right.