The Environmentall Friendly Drilling Program is managed by Texas A&M University and HARC. EFD  benefits from the direction of an industry partnership (JIP) and the endorsements from a number of governmental agencies,  O&G companies, and environmental organizations. The JIP includes a growing number of oil and gas E&P industry members, academic and governmental ecologists, environmental scientists, and sociologists whose goal is to provide the social and ecological balance to the technical and economic needs for producing oil and gas in sensitive areas. Ultimately, EFD will become a clearing house of currently known but unproven or novel technologies that can be incorporated into a system that enables drilling and production operations with a target of no environmental impact, or as minimal as possible.

The overall objective of the project is to reduce the environmental impact of O&G operations within sensitive regions within the U.S. The goal is to integrate current and new technology into a field-demonstrable E&P life cycle development system for compatibility with ecologically sensitive, restricted access, off-limits areas of the lower 48 states of the US (e.g., Otero Basins of New Mexico, wetlands of Louisiana, East Texas and Mississippi Coasts, and Rocky Mountain areas). The concept is to integrate currently known but unproven or novel technology into a drilling process or system to enable moderate (10,000–15,000 ft vertical depth) to deep (15,000–20,000 ft vertical depth) drilling and production operations for hydrocarbons with very limited environmental impact through the entire life cycle of a well and field.

Initially the EFD team concentrated on the drilling and well construction subsystem of the E&P process. During Phase 1, the JIP was organized and the EFD participants identified low-impact technologies suitable for operations in two extreme environmental conditions: desert-like (semi arid) ecology environments and a coastal margin ecosystem.  During the second phase, currently underway, various investigations and testing of prototype equipment are underway.