This paper presents an alternative chemical formulation using a new polymeric surfactant to improve the conventional alkali/surfactant/polymer (ASP) flooding. It is a one-component system for interfacial tension reduction and viscosity control. To simulate the conventional ASP flooding, the performance of the polymeric surfactant was studied in the absence and presence of sodium carbonate. The most outstanding feature of the new polymeric surfactant lies in its viscosity insensitivity towards an increasing alkali concentration up to 1.2 wt. This feature makes the new formula superior to the conventional ASP process. A combination of alkali and surfactant with a concentration of 0.8 and 0.4 wt was found to significantly reduce the interfacial tension while maintaining the desired solution viscosity. The optimal polymeric surfactant concentration was then validated in coreflood experiments using different surfactant concentrations. Using the optimum surfactant and alkali concentrations, tertiary oil recovery could reach 16.3 of the original oil in place by injecting a 0.5 pore volume of the formulated slug. This makes the new polymeric surfactant promising because it has structural feature that can be modified to give a width range of interfacial tension reduction and viscosity control to suit reservoir conditions. © 2012 The Author(s).