New Orleans ? After insisting for months that a pair of costly relief wells were the only surefire way to kill the oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, BP officials said Monday they may be able to do it just with lines running from a ship to the blown-out well a mile below.

As crews planned testing to determine whether to proceed with a “static kill” to pump mud and perhaps cement down the throat of the well, BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said if it’s successful the relief wells may not be needed, after all, to do the same weeks later from the bottom.

The primary relief well, near completion, will still be finished and could be used simply to ensure the leak is plugged, Wells said.

“Even if we were to pump the cement from the top, we will still continue on with the relief well and confirm that the well is dead,” he said. Either way, “we want to end up with cement in the bottom of the hole.”

Government officials and company executives have long said the wells, which can cost about $100 million each, may be the only way to make certain the oil is contained to its vast undersea reservoir. A federal task force says about 172 million gallons of oil made it into the Gulf between April and mid-July, when a temporary cap bottled up all the oil.

That number is on the high end of recent estimates that anywhere from 92 million to 184 million gallons had gushed into the sea.