About Danain Advisory

Background

Danain Advisory is led by Matt Ferguson, a third-generation oilman and Texas and Louisiana upstream operator. He started at ExxonMobil in 1999, running West Delta 30 in the Gulf of Mexico, and came home in 2002 to run his family's oil companies, which together made 118 boepd. He ran them, combined as Viceroy Petroleum from 2006, until 2025, growing production about 20x and closing four asset sales totaling $41.9MM without outside equity.

He has also founded oilfield service companies in coil tubing, wireline and fishing, and co-developed a vertical-well Eagle Ford fracturing method published as SPE-223552-MS. He holds a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M and has been a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers since 1998.

The operating thesis

Most value in mature upstream assets is lost in execution, not in strategy. It leaks through deferred maintenance, poorly ranked capital, weak partner alignment and liabilities that were never properly priced.

Danain's approach is to work from the field up: understand how the asset really performs, fix what is fixable, spend capital where returns are real, and be honest about risk.

Capital rules

These come from experience, including a field that was lost to concentration in one well. They are set with the board in the first 30 days:

• No single well above 20% of production.
• Recompletions and workovers funded from free cash flow only.
• High-risk drilling carried by partner capital.
• Hedging and insurance in place, with 20% of free cash flow held in reserve.

Why Danain exists

Companies and investors often need operating judgment without adding a full-time executive. Danain provides that on a project, interim or ongoing basis, with a focus on private-equity-owned and backed producers in Texas and Louisiana with $10MM to $100MM in revenue, in post-acquisition integration or buy-and-build campaigns. It is also open to President or COO roles where the fit is right.