Oil well treating method and composition

A method of treating a clay-containing earth formation for the purpose of preventing or at least reducing the swelling, migration and/or dispersion of said clay to thereby stabilize said formation, said method being comprised of contacting said clay in said formation with an effective amount of an organic polycationic polymer dispersed or dissolved in a carrier fluid, said contacting being for a time sufficient for said organic polycationic polymer to replace clay cations to thereby transform said clay to a more stable form wherein said organic polycationic polymer contains repeating monomer units defined by the structural formula ##STR23## wherein:

• R.sub.8, R.sub.10 and R.sub.11 can be the same or different and are selected from alkyl and alkenyl groups containing 1 to 6 carbon atoms, and R.sub.9 is a divalent organic aliphatic hydrocarbon group containing 2 to 40 carbon atoms;
• X is an anion selected from halides, nitrate, sulfate, methosulfate, bisulfate and carbonate;
• n is an integer equal to the number of monomer units in said polymer required to produce a molecular weight in the range of from about 800 to 3,000,000;
• and
• m is an integer equal to the number of said anions required to maintain electronic neutrality;
• and further wherein the ratio of the total number of nitrogen atoms in said polymer to the total number of carbon atoms in said polymer is in the range of from about 1 to 2 to about 1 to 36.