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Carbon steel has long been used in storing the saline water that results from oil washing in the oil industry. However, a high corrosion rate is reported, resulting in significant economic losses for oil companies. In the Middle East oil field, the temperature touches 50⁰C in Summer, causing increasing in corrosion rate for saline water steel storage tanks and pipes. In the present work, abundantly available wheat straw was used to prepare a cost-effective silicate inhibitor. The high inhibition efficiency of up to 94 % decreased the corrosion rate from severe corrosion for no-inhibitor specimen to close to low corrosion category for optimum inhibitor concentration specimen. The mechanism of the inhibition effect is the formation of a chemically adsorbed layer on the steel surface, which is successfully described by Langmuir isotherm. Additionally, at high concentrations of nano-silica, complex aggregates might form and be physically adsorbed on the surface of steel above the chemically adsorbed nano-silicate monolayer.