Abstract
The mechanical properties of rocks are essential for analysis of different problems during oil and gas drilling and production and future development. These properties are required for borehole stability, sand production, and select optimum flow rate during the completion stage and many other problems related with the short and long term mechanical stability of the well and the reservoir. The correct predictions may help in saving millions of dollars in drilling and completions costs, and may allow preventing long term and costly consequences. A common problem in oil and gas industry is the unavailability of the real core samples. To overcome this problem the engineers struggle to develop alternative sources of data via correlations, log measurements, etc. In this study, a simple scratching cell was developed and data produced was used to develop a correlation for predicting the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) for Saudi Arabian rocks.
The output of this paper is a great addition to the rock mechanics and petroleum engineering disciplines especially in Borehole instability problems during drilling of oil and gas wells.
