Mark Cronshaw, PhD
Mark Cronshaw is the Principal at Resource Economics LLC.
Mark was born in Salem, Massachusetts, the first-born child of a German-Jewish refugee father and an English mother. Mark spent early years in Switzerland, Montreal (with three siblings) and New Jersey. The family moved to Brussels, Belgium when Mark was almost nine years old. Mark went to English prep schools, Winchester College, and Cambridge University where he got a first in Chemical Engineering and did his Part II Chemical Engineering.
He received an MS in Chemical Engineering from CalTech, focused on the mechanical properties of polymers. Mark then worked in the upstream oil and gas industry in Texas for Arco Oil and Gas and Champlin Petroleum. Mark maintained a computer program of fluid flow and heat transfer in oil and gas wells, did reservoir simulation, taught pressure transient analysis, did the business case for enhanced oil recovery at Prudhoe Bay, invented an innovative tariff for the proposed Alaskan Natural Gas Transportation System, did long range planning and evaluated acquisitions and divestitures. Mark also created a computer model of fluid flow in carbon dioxide wells for enhanced oil recovery, long before general interest in CO2. During that time he also had two children and he received an MBA from Southern Methodist University.
Mark left the oil business to get a PhD in Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford, with a Hertz Fellowship. His thesis was on infinitely repeated games, providing insights about how threats and potential rewards influence current behavior. Mark then became an assistant professor in the economics department at the University of Colorado in Boulder where he taught microeconomics, mathematical economics, and game theory while researching game theory, international trade, income tax, tradable pollution permits, and experimental economics.
Mark was at the Economics Institute in Boulder for two years, preparing international students for graduate programs in economics and business. During that time, Mark assisted in establishing a program in economics and the management of technology in Minsk, Belarus. The program went on to become a 600-person business school.
Mark also spent three years in the cable television industry, where he worked on capacity planning for video-on-demand, and prepared business cases for a new computer architecture for operational support systems (databases that support large telecommunications firms) and for switching from proprietary cable telephony hardware and software to standards-based voice over IP.
He subsequently became the chief economist for the Boulder-based oil, gas and mining consulting firm Gustavson Associates. Projects included an attempt to rehabilitate the natural gas sector in Afghanistan, advising firms on international and domestic upstream oil and gas opportunities, and expert witness support for litigation about shareholder disputes and property tax, as well as natural gas operations in Kurdistan.
Since 2013, Mark has been the principal at Resource Economics LLC, providing expert witness support for litigation about helium production and midstream oil and gas fees, as well as doing economic and financial analyses for a proposed natural gas fired power plant in Pakistan, and assessment of the economic benefits from expansion of a Colorado gravel-mine. Also, he was part of a team that analyzed opportunities for Greenland to mitigate the impact of global CO2 emissions and taught courses on upstream oil and gas economics and acquisitions/divestitures.
Springer published his book “Energy in Perspective” in 2021. The book describes sources and uses of energy, and provides overviews of the oil, gas, coal, petrochemical, and electricity sectors.