Rio Tinto Alcan says more than 50,000 litres of fuel that leaked from a tank at its Nhulunbuy alumina refinery in the Northern Territory is still in the ground.
The company revealed two weeks ago that a 40-year-old tank was found to have leaked petrol into the soil beneath it.
It is now believed 62,000 litres of fuel escaped from the tank.
But the company's Alan Tietzel says the clean-up could take several weeks, with only a limited amount of fuel pumped from recovery wells so far.
"It's not in the tens of thousands, it's in the thousands of litres," he said.
"Obviously that includes some water.
"The majority of it is fuel, but some of it is also water that has been extracted along with the fuel."
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