A New York investment firm tore apart claims by the owners of the Pebble mine project that developing the prospect is economically viable in a no-holds-barred report released Feb. 14.

Yesterday, a private investment management firm out of New York released a report about Pebble's sole investor, Northern Dynasty Minerals. The report called Northern Dynasty's claims "worthless" and the project, "not commercially viable."

Northern Dynasty’s long-planned gold and copper mine, located inside a key salmon spawning habitat, is less a secret fortune-maker and more an elaborate pump-and-dump stock scheme, investment analysts from Kerrisdale Capital said Tuesday.

Kerrisdale believes Northern Dynasty’s former partners concluded that the Pebble project had a negative present value – an assessment that Northern Dynasty has spent years trying to conceal from public.

Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. expects to resolve a dispute with the U.S. environmental regulator by April to enable it to move ahead with permitting one of the world’s largest undeveloped copper and gold deposits.