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The queue snakes down the road for 50 metres: trucks, mopeds and young men with tanks in their hands. Angola pumps more oil than anywhere else in Africa, but for its people, getting hold of some takes time and precious cash.

The drivers come at a rate of 1,500 a day, pumping 65,000 litres of gasoline, says Adao Kimanha, duty manager of the filling station in Luanda's southern suburbs.

Down the road stands the swanky conference centre where ministers of the OPEC cartel were meeting on Tuesday to discuss the prices, production levels and stockpiles of the crude oil on which the world economy relies.

"We're open 24 hours. We never close," says Kimanha, a 22-year-old with the logo of the state-controlled petrol company Songangol on his shirt. "There are lots of vehicles. Lots of demand."

Behind the wheel in the baking heat, bus driver Joao Antonio reaches the front of the line after 20 minutes -- a relatively quick fill-up in the Sunday afternoon lull.

"On a weekday, it can take an hour and a half, two hours," he says.

Since it broke free seven years ago from decades of war that ruined its infrastructure, Angola has overtaken Nigeria as Africa's biggest oil producer, according to figures from the International Energy Agency.

Oil platforms run by foreign companies such as Chevron, Total and British Petroleum have sprouted off its Atlantic coast and shiny glass car showrooms stand not far from the dirt roads of Luanda's slums.

Despite producing up to 1.9 million barrels of crude a day, Angola's refineries are only working at half-capacity and it imports three million tonnes of petroleum products a year, its oil minister says.

Along with the limited number of gas stations operated by Songangol, this swells the queues.

"There just aren't enough petrol stations. They should build more," said oil worker Jose Lapi, sitting in the queue at the wheel of his air-conditioned four-wheel drive.

Oil Minister Jose Botelho de Vasconcelos last week promised the government would "intervene" in the petrol pump problem, with measures "in commercialisation, in supply posts, in wholesale."

"We're working at full pelt so that the new rules of regulation in the sector can be concluded within 18 months," he said in an interview in the economic weekly Exame.

Gasoline costs 40 kwanzas (about 0.45 dollars, 0.30 euros) a litre in a country where more than two thirds of people live on two dollars a day, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos said earlier this month that six in 10 Angolans live in poverty and hunger with little access to clean water.

A few yards (metres) along the road, a man in a blue basketball vest sits beside a stack of plastic petrol containers. He sells for 50 kwanzas a litre, a mark-up from the pump price for those willing to pay extra to cut the queue.

"I have a life of sacrifice," said the 31-year-old man, a demobilised army sergeant who would not give his name.

Visiting the gas pumps in the middle of the night and then selling from morning until evening, he can make up to 200 dollars on a good day, but still faces hardship in a city where lunch in a restaurant can run into triple figures.

OPEC ministers said they were happy with petrol prices hovering around 75 dollars a barrel, ahead of their meeting down the road.

"That meeting just benefits the ones who have money," the petrol seller said. "The poor go on suffering."