Surfactant adsorption onto reservoir rock surfaces is a major issue in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) applications, decreasing the economic success of an EOR project. A method to minimize loss of surfactant is to encapsulate the surfactant and deliver it directly to the oil-water interface. This can be done through the use of naturally occurring clay nanotubes known as halloysites, where surfactants can be encapsulated in the lumen of the nanotubes. Halloysite nanotubes are about 1 mu m in length with an outer diameter of about 70 nm and a lumen diameter of about 50 nm. These natural clay nanotubes are thermally stable, inexpensive, abundantly available, and environmentally friendly. An interesting aspect of the halloysite is that it has a predominantly negatively charged outer silica surface and a positively charged inner alumina surface. The surfactants are loaded into the halloysite nanotubes (HNTs) and coated with a thin layer of paraffin wax through a vacuum suction and solvent evaporation method. A thin paraffin wax coating/skin over the surfactant-loaded halloysites prevents the premature release of surfactants until they are in contact with oil, which promotes dissolution of the wax, releasing the surfactant. Imbibition experiments are carried out by measuring oil recovered after pushing injection fluids containing the HNTs through a capillary packed tightly with fresh and crude oil-saturated crushed shale cores. At 70 degrees C, the wax-coated surfactant-loaded halloysites system exhibited 40% oil recovery, compared to just 16% for surfactant alone and 3% for wax-coated halloysite (no surfactant). A much lower oil recovery for the surfactant alone (16%) can be attributed to excessive surfactant adsorption to the fresh core (85% adsorption), making these adsorbed surfactants unavailable to be in contact with the oil for enhancing the recovery. The method of surfactant encapsulation in wax-coated halloysites therefore leads to a targeted, stimulus-responsive delivery system to the oil-water interface in shale reservoirs with the potential to enhance oil recovery.