Derek’s career has been fully devoted to oil & gas advisory, where he has completed over $15 billion in capital raising, M&A, and A&D transactions. Derek spent the first four years of his career within Merrill Lynch’s natural resources investment banking unit across Houston, Sydney, and Perth; followed by four years at Integral Advisors, a boutique A&D advisory firm he co-founded in 2009; and finally one year on the Wells Fargo A&D team.

Derek formed Detring Energy Advisors in 2014 to focus on middle market upstream A&D advisory, where the firm has closed ~175 transactions totaling ~US$6.5 billion. The company has continually grown its market share in upstream A&D and recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary in September 2024. As Detring moved up market, the firm established PetroDivest Advisors in 2018 to provide the same “best in class” advisory services for lower middle market assets.

Derek graduated summa cum laude and first in his engineering class from Vanderbilt University and attended the Wharton Executive Education Program, where he passed with honors.