David Fishman initially pursued an academic career at the City of London Polytechnic after leaving the University of Essex in 1975 with an MA in Economics. He then trained for a year as a computer programmer with a finance house until joining in early 1980 an Upstream oil and gas technical consultancy as Economics manager. He remained in this field for 35 years and is expert in the upstream oil and gas industry of economic and commercial analyses including project economics, finance and corporate valuations, risked exploration economics, software development, competent persons reports, conducting training courses, advising on fiscal system design and take, economic model building and auditing and price and industry analysis including LNG. His final position before retirement was as Chief Economist with Robertson Fugro/CGG.