imilarly, oil and gas must be sought in more inaccessible places, which add to their production costs. The present variety of sources ranges from shallow Mideast oil wells to expensive capital-intensive solar equipment. The choice of a fuel to be produced amounts to the future opportunity costs of alternative fuel sources. Note that the rising scarcity of fuel is a matter of degree. There exists a great variety of choices from cheap fuels to very expensive ones. Rather than use up all of them at once, the world is expected to move to increasing scarcity, which will take the form of rising energy prices. Moreover, investors will realize the coming scarcity and try to buy the reserves now, which in itself will send up prices. In short, the market anticipates the physical shortages, and the expected future Price increases raise the current price of fuel. Since most fuels can be replaced by others in, at least, some uses, the rise in oil prices, for example, naturally, results in a parallel rise in prices for other fuels, including coal, gas, nuclear fuel, and even firewood. And indeed, there occurred a steep rise of oil Prices, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. It stimulated the search for more n deposits. Much of the effort has been focused on the ocean floors, espelally in remote regions. The search for gas has also been stimulated as a rue l t of the removal of some controls on the price of US gas. These added torts have brought some results. However, the marginal revenue of explored continues to decrease. One should expect this since the cheapest; most 121 accessible sources were exploited decades ago. Moreover, it is costlier to transport the more remote oil and gas reserves to the market. For example, oil and gas pipelines from Alaska and large-investment projects
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