“We’ve stopped making predictions,” Vice President of Investor Relations Les Van Dyke said during a telephone interview. “We’re still confident that everything is going to come together but we don’t want to make predictions that we may not meet.”

Probex wants to become a world leader in the collection and processing of used motor oil using its patented ProTerra technology. The company claims that the process avoids creating waste by-products inherent in other reprocessing technologies. It also says that the process yields base oils that are higher in quality than those used in the original product and which are suited for the new GF-3 specification of passenger car motor oils.

Probex already collects used motor oil that it sells into the burner fuel market. It has said that those operations, along with signed contracts, will provide enough feedstock to operate its first reprocessing plant, which has already been permitted for Wellsville, Ohio.

Last February, officials said they expected to obtain financing for the plant by April. Van Dyke said Monday that financing has been more difficult to secure, at least in part because of the economic downturn.

“The stock market has taken a beating and everyone has become much more cautious about what they invest in,” he said.

In the past year, the price of Probex’s stock has fallen from more than $2.60 per share to $1.19 as of Monday. “I think that’s reflective both of market conditions and also somewhat of the fact that it has taken longer than we predicted to obtain financing,” Van Dyke said.

Probex says it is also negotiating with an unnamed multinational corporation to build a processing facility in Europe.