水是生命之液。它从空气、陆地到海洋，不断循环，使地球上的生命得以存在。成年人体内平均约60%由水构成，一生中消耗约5万升水。

然而，这种神奇的解决方案也会带来不少问题——危险的海流、过多水从空中落下过快导致的陆地洪水，以及可能阻碍海洋勘探的深海高压。然而，水是一种商品，没有人比石油和天然气行业更了解这一点，因为每天有数百万加仑的水被用于刺激复杂的页岩井，使其释放出碳氢化合物资源。

在某些地区，油井和气井的回水量远远低于泵入的水量。

Water is the liquid of life. It cycles endlessly from air, land, and sea, and makes life on planet Earth possible. The average adult human is made up of roughly 60% water and consumes around 50,000 liters of water in a lifetime.

However, this miracle solution can pose its fair share of problems—dangerous currents at sea, flooding on land when too much falls from the sky too fast, and crushing pressures at depths that can hinder ocean exploration. Still, water is a commodity, and no one may know that better than the oil and gas business, where millions of gallons of water are used every day to stimulate complex shale wells into giving up their hydrocarbon resource.

In some regions, oil and gas wells do not return nearly the water that is pumped into them.