Iraq's Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani is among the 10 cabinet ministers that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is intending to reshuffle during the next few days, a close aide to Maliki and an Iraqi lawmaker said Tuesday.
"The Prime Minister will change 10 cabinet ministers and one of them would be Hussein al-Shahristani," the aide told Dow Jones Newswires.
An Iraqi lawmaker Bahaa al-Araji, who is a member of the economic committee at the parliament, told local television that the oil minister is among the 10 ministers that Maliki was intending to change.
It isn't known, however, when Maliki would announce his cabinet reshuffle.
An oil industry expert said Shahristani, a nuclear scientist who worked at Saddam's atomic energy center during the 1980s, lacks knowledge of the Iraqi oil sector.
It isn't known, however, who would replace Shahristani, who is from the powerful Shiite alliance which has the majority of seats at the parliament.
Oil analysts said veteran former oil minister Thamer al-Ghadhban is one of three candidates for the job. Ghadhban is currently an oil adviser to al-Maliki. The remaining two are ex-oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, the son of prominent Shiite clergyman Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum, and Abdul Jabbar al-Luaybi head of the South Oil Company, they added.
Al-Shahristani served a 10-year prison sentence under Saddam starting in 1981. He then fled to Iran, where he was active in efforts against Saddam's government. He also lived in Canada, and returned to Iraq after the U.S. toppled Saddam in 2003.
Al-Maliki said Sunday that he was planning a major shake-up of his cabinet, apparently to redress his six-month-old government's failure to curb widespread corruption, reduce sectarian violence and improve public services.
Speaking to a closed session of Parliament, al-Maliki suggested that some of his ministers were incompetent but said he had been forced to accept his cabinet under pressure from the country's major political blocs, according to several legislators. The prime minister asked for more independence in choosing new cabinet members.
Several months ago, al-Maliki expressed his intention to replace several of his 36 ministers, but Sunday's announcement suggested far more sweeping changes.
Iraq currently produces around 2 million b/d of crude - far less than what the Iraqi government expects, especially for the desperately needed cash to reconstruct the country.
Of its current production, Iraq exports only about 1.5 million b/d at present, compared with around 2.2 million b/d before the war.
Another pressing problem for any oil minister is to deal with frequent attacks by insurgent on pipelines in northern Iraq. A recent report by the Ministry's inspector general said Iraq lost $24.7 billion between 2004 and mid-2006 on lost oil revenues due to acts of sabotage and lack of investment.