Business activity
Upon leaving his governmental post, Yuri Shafranik devoted himself to business activities. In 1997, in Moscow, he founded and took charge of the Central Fuel Company. Over a short period of time it became a leader in the regional wholesale petroleum products market of the day.
Central Fuel Company was one of the participants in the international project Inam. The work was performed in partnership with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic, transnational chemical and oil company Amoco, and British conglomerate Monument Oil & Gas. Later, the project was sold to Shell for $18 million.
Three years later, in 2000, Yuri Shafranik founded the international group SNG and became the Chairman of its Board of Directors. The group focused primarily at development of oil and gas projects worldwide in partnership with other Russian, western or local institutional investors. From the day it was founded until 2019, when SNG group completed its active investment phase, it implemented a number of large-scale projects in the energy industry.
Under Yuri Shafranik's management, the group successfully carried out a broad range of projects in Azerbaijan, Algeria, the United Kingdom, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Columbia, Russia, and other locations. The group's projects attracted over $10 billion in investments, and the net return realized on investor's capital was $6 billion. The total volume of commercial stock obtained with SNG's participation was 2 billion tons of crude oil equivalent. All of the projects the group carried out were for-profit; there was no direct governmental participation or state funding.