Brass River In 2005 the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) was producing oil from 146 wells, and operated an export terminal at Brass River. Brass River Crude Oil is a sweet medium light crude. In the 17th and 18th centuries the Portuguese controlled the Brass River, which was closed to British traders and was an outlet for shipping slaves to the Americas. The town of Brass was inaccessible, reached only via the creeks. After 1807 the British began trying to suppress the slave trade. Don Pablo Frexas, in alliance with the chiefs of Brass and Bonny, was the main organizer of the
Brass River new trade. The prominent Nigerian journalist and nationalist John Payne Jackson at first wanted to be a merchant. After traveling throughout West Africa, in the late 1860s he found work with the prominent Lagos merchant J. S. Leigh. He was sent to the Brass River in the 1870s to manage Leigh's station there. Jackson branched out into trading palm products on his own account, but was forced out of business by European competitors, an experience that may have affected his outlook towards Europeans. S. A. Crowther, Bishop of Niger Territory, reported in 1885 that the native converts at Nembe, Brass