After three days of encouraging pressure tests, a senior BP official said Sunday that the company’s recently capped Gulf well was holding well and that the company hoped to keep it closed until it could be permanently plugged.

The new BP plan differs greatly from the one the company and the federal government had suggested only a day earlier—to eventually allow the flow of oil to resume temporarily through vents on the cap and collect as much crude as possible through pipes to surface ships.  If BP succeeds in keeping the cap closed until the relief wells are finished, that would mean the gusher would effectively be over.

While the oil company is hopeful, the federal government is more cautious. Last Sunday, the government ordered BP to step up monitoring of the well after “undetermined anomalies” were detected in the nearby seafloor. It was later discovered that there was a seep—a flow of hydrocarbons from the seafloor—near the well.

Though the government will allow the pressure tests to continue for now, the seep suggests that the well could be damaged and that it may have to be reopened soon to avoid making the situation worse.