BAGHDAD, April 25 (UPI) -- Despite the breakthrough achieved in Iraq's cabinet crisis with the appointment of Jawad al-Maliki as prime minister, competition over portfolios is looming.
The Islamic Virtue Party, one of seven political groups making up the Shiite Iraqi Unified Coalition, said Tuesday it insists on holding the oil ministry in the new government.
Party spokesman Sheikh Sabah Saidi said his group made great achievements since taking hold of the ministry in the outgoing government and deserves to keep it.
Saidi pointed out that among the achievements increasing the rate of crude oil extraction from 1.550 million barrels per day (bpd) to 2.200 million bpd.
He said the volume of Iraq's exports of crude oil also rose from 1.4 million bpd to 2.8 million bpd, at a time the ministry reduced the amount of Iraq's purchases of oil derivatives from abroad from $500 million to $230 million per month.
Saidi also revealed that Iraq is currently exploiting 15 oil fields in the production stage out of 75 fields which need to be excavated.
In another development, nine people were killed, including four police officers, and 12 were injured in separate attacks in Iraq Tuesday.
A car bomb exploded near a police patrol in the western part of Baghdad, wounding two policemen and another bomb exploded in a public bus in the Shiite-populated Sadr City in west Baghdad, killing two civilians and injuring five others.
For its part, the U.S. army said in a statement that four Iraqi police officers were killed and two injured in clashes with gunmen on the highway near Tikrit, north of Baghdad.
