The facility is expected to process 24 million gallons of used oil annually and produce about 20 million gallons per year of API Group II base oil in three viscosity grades: 85, 150 and 330.

He said the most of the rerefinerys construction should be completed by March. The schedule calls for pre-commissioning in the late March/early April time frame, and plant commissioning in mid-May. That will be completed by the end of June, he said. Once that is completed, then well receive our certificate for operation, and thats what we call the commercial operation date.

The company is basically building the plant in two phases, Bell noted. The first phase includes the tank farm, utilities, office building and blending plant building, he said. The blending plant building were still in progress on, but the rest of that work is pretty much completed. Were now moving into phase 2, which is the construction of the process unit itself. We set our first steel columns last week.

The rerefinery will use Revivoil technology, developed by Viscolube of Italy and Axens of France.

NexLube will acquire the necessary used oil feedstock from collectors. The Tampa facility is located on a 12-acre site situated in the Port Sutton area of the Port of Tampa. On its web site, the company said its deep water port provides access for used oil feedstock and product delivery by barge, highway and railroad. One of the attractions we have in Florida is it has a very large amount of used automotive oil, he said. We do have about half of our plant [used oil feedstock] demand under contract now, and we would expect the other half to be concluded within the next 60 days.

The blending plant will be designed to produce about 24 million gallons per year of finished lubricants, including motor oil, hydraulic fluid, transmission fluid and specialty products such as white oil.