This chapter provides all basic political, economic, and demographic data on a territorial unit of the Russian Federation, the Tyumen Oblast. Stretching from the Ural Mountains in the west toward the lower reaches of the Yenisei River in the east and from the Kara Sea in the north to the Kazakh border in the south, Tyumen Oblast covers most of the West Siberian Plain. The oblast is extremely rich in raw materials. Tyumen Oblast is Russia’s main oil and gas supplier. The rest of the oblast’s GDP comes from timber processing, machine building, petrochemical industries, and agriculture, and such traditional indigenous industries as fishing, hunting, and gathering. Tyumen’s investment climate has slightly improved in 1997: the oblast had the country’s seventh biggest decrease of investment risks—by 35 points.