With over 40 million barrels of crude oil accidentally released into oceans over the past 50 years, there is a pressing need for cost-efficient remediation technologies. One of the challenges in cleaning oil spills is the removal of emulsified crude oil from seawater. Recently, superwetting nanocomposite (SWN) foams, polymeric foams coated with functionalized nanomaterials, have emerged as cost-efficient solutions for cleaning oil spills. In the past decade, significant advances have been made in foam and nanocoating fabrication processes. Building upon these advances, we aim to determine physicochemical surface wetting properties to remove different types of crude oil emulsions from seawater to advance the practical implementation of SWN foams. In this work, the SWN foams were engineered to remove three types of emulsified crude oil (low, medium, and high viscosity) from seawater. Based on the crude oil’s chemical composition, the SWN foams were fabricated by grafting a polyurethane foam with amino silanes (AS) and fluoroalkyl silane (FAS) for targeted removal of oil droplets. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were also added to evaluate the effects on hydrophobicity, mechanical properties and efficacy. The SWN foams can remove light, medium, and heavy crude oil emulsions from seawater across practical seawater environmental conditions, such as pH, temperature, and salinity. Relative to the pristine foam, the SWN foams show 10 times faster oil adsorption kinetics, meaning over 99% oil removal in less than 5 minutes. In the future, the SWN foams will be investigated to clean large scale oil spills using a bench scale filtration system. Our approach of modifying the surface chemistry of SWN foams to compliment the crude oil’s composition has enabled targeted capture of a range of crude oils under practical environmental conditions. Due to their ultrafast performance and low cost, the approach advances SWN foams towards being a practically viable solution for cleaning large-scale oil spills.