EAST CHICAGO | Safety-Kleen is expanding its East Chicago facility, already the world's largest motor oil re-recycling plant, to increase its total capacity of base oil by 16 percent annually, the company announced Monday.

The $15 million expansion, which began in 2007 and will be finished by the end of the year, includes a 9 million gallon tank farm at the intersection of Indianapolis Boulevard and Riley Road.

The East Chicago facility, which employs about 100 workers, is located on Indianapolis Boulevard between Riley Road and the Indiana Harbor Ship Canal. Since it's opening in 1991, it has increased its production 250 percent, re-refining more than 1.6 billion gallons of oil, the company reports.

The expansion is a continuation of the company's commitment to protecting the environment, further improving used motor oil recycling and helping businesses "make green work," the company reported.

"Recycling is at the heart of America's green movement, and Safety-Kleen is a national leader in this field, recycling 80 percent of the liquid and solid industrial wastes we collect each year for re-use or energy recovery," said Frederick J. Florjancic Jr., the company's president and CEO, in a prepared statement.

Safety-Kleen collects spent oil from service stations, garages and quick lube dealers. It then puts the "dirty" oil through a process that removes dirt and deteriorating additives and then through additional processes that makes the oil reusable.

The re-recycling process allows the oil to be reused by industry with about 70 percent of the reprocessed oil sold for lubricating oil. The remainder is split almost equally between asphalt extender and fuel.