Over a decade after the BP oil spill, the removal of spilled oil, especially the crude oil droplets, is still not completed. The removal of the complex oil droplets from water is even more difficult in the Arctic environment, where an estimated 13% of the world’s fossil fuel reserves are yet to discovered. The design of effective surface-engineered sponges (SEnS) remains elusive despite their growing importance for separating oil/water mixtures, especially gelled crude oil and water commonly seen in Arctic oil spills. Here, we report a SEnS that complements the thermoresponsive properties of crude oil to clean Arctic oil spills. With cooling, heavier organic molecules precipitate from the crude oil, causing oil droplets to agglomerate and transform into oil/water gel. To adsorb these gels, surface coatings for the polymeric sponge substrate were developed by functionalizing nanosilicon (ncSi) with heavier organic molecules of different chain lengths (Cx). The SEnS was fabricated with ncSi-Cx resulted in a uniform coating, compatible surface chemistry, and critical surface energy leading to the adsorptive recovery of oil/water gels with a 96-99% removal efficacy from water. The adsorbed crude oil was also recovered from the SEnS by rinsing with an aliphatic-aromatic solvent mixture and oil was subsequently separated from the solvent mixture by distillation. The SEnS was reused for ten cycles and exhibited continued high oil removal efficacy. The reusable SEnS designed with heavier organic molecules is promising for the reclamation of oil spills, making it a potential energy-efficient and practical solution. Note: Part of this work is now published (Cherukupally, et al. Science Advances, 7(11), eabc7926), but we will include unpublished work to ensure novelty.