CALAIS – In just nine months, Ian Emery’s profile within Washington County has been enlarged many times over.

He has moved from lobsters to the Legislature and, lately, to LNG.

Once a working fisherman out of Cutler with a family to feed, Emery found his election last November as a Republican representative in Augusta put him in a position to advocate for a better economy within Washington County.

Now, Emery has immersed himself in a liquefied natural gas project proposed for Calais.

LNG is a field entirely new to him, but it has fast become a favorite topic for many coastal Washington County residents when discussions turn to economic development.

Bringing LNG facilities to the U.S. coast is a topic of deliberation on a national scale. Emery and his LNG partner, Fred Moore Jr. – also a state legislator, representing the Passamaquoddy Tribe – have their sights set on being part of that national trend.

Emery and Moore have formed BP Consulting LLC. They have brought Cianbro Corp. into their LNG loop as engineers – unpaid, at this point, Emery said.

“You know LNG is coming to Washington County,” Emery said earlier this week in an interview, acknowledging the two out-of-state developers who have already placed LNG proposals before the municipalities of Pleasant Point, Perry and Robbinston.

“If it’s coming here, it should be owned by the people here, and they should enjoy the full fruits of the project.

“This is, like, a billion dollar a year thing. With the other projects, all that money would be going out of state. Our project is all a Maine-based team.”

Emery, R-Cutler, and Moore went public with their plans last week with a presentation to the Calais City Council. They want to build a $500 million plant south of Devil’s Head, with a pier extending into the St. Croix River.

The notion that a third development group was looking to place an LNG facility within Calais had become a poorly kept secret in the city. Emery’s involvement with it, however, was the surprise element.

Moore is serving as the liaison with the tribal members of the Indian Township reservation who would actually own the facility. Emery is the partner who would land the link with a major petroleum company that would back the project.

Emery said in the interview on Monday that he expects the company could have its federal permit in hand “a year from now.”

Eight other people, “all local,” have invested in the company’s pending acquisition of 250 acres in the Red Beach area of Calais, just above the town line with Robbinston. BP Consulting has options to purchase that much land from two owners, but neither wants to be identified.

An agreement with a third owner, for 80 more adjoining acres, is being signed this week, Emery said.

The consultants are on the fast track now. Naturally, critics have risen up quickly.

A number of Passamaquoddy elders at the Pleasant Point reservation, where an Oklahoma developer wants to build an LNG facility, took the two legislators to task during a news conference Wednesday.

They suggested that Emery and Moore may be trading on their legislative credentials and crossing moral and ethical lines in their quest to front an LNG development firm.

But that’s not how Vinton Cassidy sees it.

The mayor of Calais, Cassidy doubles as a member of the state’s Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices.

Last week, even before the pair’s formal presentation to the council on Aug. 25, Cassidy had prepared a letter of support for Emery and Moore.

He wrote of the city’s intent “to work in good faith and in connection with BP Consulting LLC in its efforts to negotiate a proposal for the construction of a LNG terminal in Calais.”

Cassidy also sent a letter, dated Aug. 25, to Gov. John Baldacci.

“The governor has requested that communities let him know of their support for LNG,” Cassidy said Tuesday. “He would like to know where there is support for LNG in Washington County.”

The city’s letter to the governor reads, in part: “As demonstrated by the attached Resolution, the City of Calais welcomes the opportunity to assist in the development of a LNG terminal in Calais.”

Both Emery and Cassidy confirmed that the two parties had discussed the proposal to bring LNG to Calais in at least two executive sessions in the weeks and months leading up to last Thursday’s announcement.

Linda Pagels, the city manager, said any executive sessions with the council on the economic development project would have involved “land negotiations” only.

While Calais council members have had no intentions to part with any city-owned land, the fact that Emery and Moore were even inquiring about acquiring such property was justification for the executive sessions, both Pagels and Cassidy said.

As to how Emery, a freshman legislator, came to join Moore in the LNG project: Emery said he was introduced to the idea last winter.

The county’s legislative delegation was dining out together in Augusta, he said. Donald Smith, the Oklahoma developer who had put together an LNG proposal for Pleasant Point with Fred Moore and others, joined them to make an LNG presentation.

“I was skeptical,” Emery said. “I had no interest in creating a company, but I was just listening to their proposal.”

Weeks later, Emery asked Moore how his LNG project with Smith was going. Moore told him he had gotten out of that arrangement, in part because he felt the tribe at Pleasant Point had not been given a fair deal on the income that a successful LNG project could yield.

The two then put their own heads together, believing that “much more could be achieved” by a tribe’s involvement with LNG. Moore pitched tribal leaders at Indian Township, while Emery “did a lot of soul searching” before signing on himself.

“We are putting our reputations on the line, and our families,” he said.

Emery said his wife, for one, approves of his new venture.

“She said that if I realize my priority is making my living as a fisherman, and if I can also do my work as a representative, and if this truly benefits the people of the county,” he said, “then I should go for it.”