Summary Water-soluble organics (WSOs) are included in the measurement of oil and grease (O&G), a conventional pollutant controlled by the Clean Water Act. WSOs partition to the produced brine at the production pH, but to the extraction solvent used to measure the O&G at the test pH of <2. The predominant chemical species comprising WSOs in Gulf of Mexico crude oil brines are medium-chain carboxylic acids. Chemicals can be added to desolubilize these species in conjunction with treatments to remove the resultant emulsion. For a variety of reasons, the most reliable and cost-effective desolubilization agents have proven to be the nonvolatile, multiprotic oxo acids (e.g., HxSOx and HxPOx). However, in the presence of many common divalent cations in the brine, these form insoluble scale deposits. Moreover, in the presence of WSOs in mixed production, this scale becomes oil-wet and uninhibitable. A new treatment comprising a new class of desolubilizer in conjunction with certain polymers has now been shown to be equally reliable and cost-effective without the formation of scale, even at extreme concentrations of divalent cations. The chemistry is explained and case histories chronicled to illustrate its effectiveness in the field.