Born in 1952 in a Siberian settlement in the Tyumen Oblast, Shafranik graduated from a local high school before going on to study electrical and mining engineering at the Tyumen Industrial Institute in Tyumen city, which he left with two degrees under his belt. In 2006 Shafranik gained a doctorate in Economics after publishing an academic paper on the conditions and economic mechanisms of rationalisation in the development of hydrocarbon resources.
Yuri Shafranik’s professional career originally began as a mechanic in 1974 at the Lagnepasneftegaz Company, Tyumen - one of the biggest oil manufacturers in Russia. By 1987 he had worked his way up in the company to the position of Chief Executive Officer.
In 1990, Yuri Shafranik became Chairman of the Tyumen Regional Council of People’s Deputies - and the youngest leader of the region in Russia. A year later, Shafranik was appointed as Governor of Tyumen Oblast and from 1993 to 1996, he was active as Russia’s Minister of Energy.
He was part of his country’s representation in the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission in the early 1990s, which focussed on economic and technological cooperation. Yuri Shafranik’s expertise and knowledge contributed a great deal to the initiative, and he gained broad recognition for this both in his own country and the US. He then left politics as a modern Russia with a market-based economy and democracy emerged.
As a businessman, Yuri Shafranik has been equally successful. In 1997 he founded the Central Fuel Company, which became the leading regional petroleum products wholesaler in three short years. Central Fuel Company, together with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic and Amoco, was one of the participants in the international project Inam. Later on, the project was sold to Shell for $18 million.
Yuri Shafranik then established the group of companies SoyuzNefteGaz in 2000 - specialist enterprises in oil and gas exploration with operations in Russia and abroad, where he serves as Chairman. The group’s projects attracted over $1 billion in investments, and the net return realised on investor’s capital is $1.5 billion. The total volume of commercial stock obtained with SoyuzNefteGaz's participation is 1 billion tons of crude oil equivalent. All of the group’s projects are for-profit; there is no direct governmental participation or state funding.
In addition to being at the helm of successful projects and activity at SoyuzNefteGaz, Yuri Shafranik was also a director at Canadian oil and natural gas exploration and development firm First Calgary Petroleums from 2003 until 2008, when Italian business Eni SpA acquired it for $923 million.
Besides being a successful businessman, Yuri Shafranik is an active member of a number of non-commercial and non-governmental organisations, several of which he also chairs: Supreme Mining Council, Union of Oil and Gas Producers of Russia, Institute of Energy Strategy. His non-business activities are centred on public diplomacy and good communications practice.
Today, Yuri Shafranik is co-chair of the Russian delegation to the Dartmouth Conference, one of the most important coalition platforms for maintaining relations between Russia and the US through discussion and debate in solving the key issues of concern between the superpowers. In 2019, the governments of both countries were addressed by the Dartmouth Conference’s working group, which included Shafranik, to warn about the possible dangers of failing to extend the US-Russia Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms.
Yuri Shafranik is married and has two children. His interests include world history, theatre and travel.
