Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has become more and more important due to the growing energy demand and depleting oil reserves. Among the various EOR methods, chemical EOR (cEOR) is considered to be expensive and field applications have almost completely stopped during the past three decades except in China. Recently, cEOR has drawn increasing interest due to the increase in oil prices and the scarcity of cheap oil reserves. Therefore, research on chemical EOR showed a major growth in the recent years.

The purpose of this special issue will be on the new and existing cEOR systems. The special issue will summarize the results of research, pilot tests, and field applications related to chemical EOR. The focus will be on synthesis, laboratory testing, and field applications of new cEOR materials used in flooding or stimulation processes. The special issue will become an international forum for researchers to summarize the most recent developments and ideas in the field, with a special emphasis given to the technical and observational results obtained within the last five years. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Synthesis of novel surfactants (S) or viscoelastic surfactants (VESs) for cEOR
• Synthesis of novel polymers for chemical EOR
• Development of surfactant/polymer (SP) systems for specific applications
• Development of alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP) systems
• Laboratory evaluation of new S, SP, ASP, or VES systems
• New polymeric gels for water shutoff
• Stability of surfactants/polymers used in cEOR applications
• New screening methods for cEOR applications
• Results of pilot or field testing of the above systems
• Developments in measurement techniques for cEOR
• Thermodynamics and phase diagrams of cEOR systems
• Fouling and corrosion in cEOR applications
• Future strategies of cEOR
• Review or comments on the development of cEOR

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/chem/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/author/submit/journals/chem/petroleum.chemistry/eor/ according to the following timetable: