The electric conduction under intense electric fields (up to ∼ 109 V/m) in nanofluids using surface-modified ZnO–C18 nanoparticles dispersed in mineral oil as host, is investigated with both experiments and numerical simulations. The measurements are used to estimate unknown parameters necessary to represent the generation and loss of electrons in an electrohydrodynamic model for mineral oil with and without ZnO–C18 nanoparticles in a needle-plane configuration. The model suggests that ZnO–C18 nanoparticles induce an enhanced field emission from negative needles, explaining the significantly larger conduction currents measured in the nanofluid compared with those in the host liquid. It is also found that the scavenging of electrons by ZnO–C18 nanoparticles is a process which is negligible compared with the loss of electrons due to attachment in mineral oil. It is shown that ZnO–C18 nanoparticles hinder the streamer initiation process by reducing the effective electric field at the tip of the needle. This electric field reduction is caused by the combined effect of enhanced electron injection through ZnO–C18 nanoparticles and strong electron attachment in mineral oil. Thus, the electric field on the needle tip reaches the same threshold value when the streamer is incepted in the nanofluid as in mineral oil, although at a larger voltage. Solid evidence indicating that the additional electron scavenging and the reduced electron mobility introduced by nanoparticles has no effect in the conduction currents and in the negative streamer inception in the tested ZnO–C18 nanofluids is shown.