Shell is confident it will be able to drill for oil and natural gas in Alaska's arctic region this summer as it hopes to overcome its remaining legal challenges.

"We still have a few not insignificant hurdles to get past, but it looks that we will be drilling," Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil Co., the U.S. unit of the Anglo-Dutch giant, said in prepared remarks delivered at a conference in Houston.

Shell recently received various federal environmental permits to drill in Alaska's Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, but environmental groups have filed lawsuits challenging those approvals.