Jesse Frederik, a smart Dutch journalist, has arguedthat locals greatly exaggerated the harmfulness of the earthquakes.

I really appreciate the author making their bias this obvious.

What a load of bullshit.

This doesn't make sense. If they simply plug them with cement, it's fairly easy to just drill out the cement plug and do some clean up runs before testing the well and putting it back into operation. If they've actually filled the entire string with cement you simply go down the same hole, kick off above the cement and drill a new one next to the previous. I'm not advocating for it, but you're not destroying the field by doing this, just making startup more cumbersome. Seems like spending money on image politics to me