“Arctic Ready” Shell website is almost certainly a hoax

A new website has popped up, purporting to be an attempt by Shell Oil to win over public support for drilling in the arctic. They’ve apparently set up a make-your-own-postcard tool to encourage people to share the message of “Let’s Go”.

I was duped by it. I joined in the schaedenfreude and hilarity, writing a scathing postcard of my own. But after a closer look, it appears that this is all a big elaborate hoax.

None of the links in the footer of the website go to an actual shell.com website. Everything redirects to www.arcticready.com. A whois lookup on the domain name shows that the site is owned by an anonymous individual in Vancouver, Washington. Meanwhile, the whois lookup for shell.com clearly shows administrative and technical contacts at the company’s head office in London.

At the time of this post, the website had over 1700 shares on Facebook, 713 Tweets, and 59 Google Plus Ones. A jolly good effort, Mr. Vancouver man. Here’s hoping the actual Shell doesn’t shut down your site first thing on Monday morning.