Brenda Shaffer is an American energy and foreign-policy specialist whose work focuses on energy politics and international relations, particularly in the Caspian region and the South Caucasus. She is a faculty member at the Naval Postgraduate School and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Global Energy Center. She has also taught in Israel at the University of Haifa.
Shaffer has been the subject of coverage and criticism concerning disclosure and alleged conflicts of interest involving Azerbaijan and its state oil company SOCAR. In 2014, The New York Times added an editor's note to an op-ed by Shaffer stating that the piece did not disclose she had been an adviser to Azerbaijan's state-run oil company and that the newspaper's contributor contract required disclosure of actual or potential conflicts of interest. In 2014, The Washington Post also appended a correction to an opinion piece by Shaffer stating that she had consulted for SOCAR and other governments and companies and that she “occasionally writes columns” for SOCAR's in-house publication.
