One of the major concerns in shale gas production is water management. Millions of gallons of water are injected to fracture each well and a significant amount returns to the surface as flowback. Operators are increasingly reusing flowback to reduce freshwater consumption and impaired water disposal. Because of this, networks of water pipelines in U.S. shales are growing fast. This work is aimed at addressing the optimal planning of shale gas operations in multiple wellpads together with the design of water distribution networks (WDN). We propose a multiperiod mixed‐integer linear programming model to solve the challenging stay‐or‐mobilize trade‐off. The proposed model permits to schedule operations at a detailed level, accounting for the WDN required to maximize the reuse of impaired water. We present illustrative examples involving up to 20 pads, 4 frac‐crews, and 100 wells developed over 1 year, showing that the design of the WDN can be effectively optimized.

中文翻译：

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页岩气资源开发的输水管网优化设计

页岩气生产的主要关注之一是水的管理。注入数百万加仑的水使每口井都破裂，大量的水以回流的形式返回地面。运营商越来越多地使用回流，以减少淡水消耗和水处理受损。因此，美国页岩中的输水管网正在快速增长。这项工作旨在解决多个井场中页岩气作业的最佳计划以及水分配网络（WDN）的设计问题。我们提出了一种多周期混合整数线性规划模型，以解决具有挑战性的停留或动员权衡。提议的模型允许在详细级别安排操作，并考虑到最大限度地利用受损水的再利用所需的WDN。我们提供的示例性示例涉及多达20个打击垫，