Chemical potential related borehole (in)stabilities in the field are predominantly time-dependent. With the intention of developing a real-time wellbore (in)stability modelling capability, experimental work was undertaken to investigate the role of the chemical potential of drilling fluids on transient pore pressure and time-dependent rock property alterations of shale formations. The current work presents the concept, and discusses the results of these undertakings. The experiments using a Pore Pressure Transmission Test (PPT) apparatus expose formation (shale) cores under simulated downhole conditions to various salt solutions and drilling fluids. The uniqueness of this study comes from the fact that time-dependent alteration in the pore pressure, acoustic and rock properties of formations subjected to compressive tri-axial stress are recorded during the PPT experiments. This eliminates the anisotropy-associated differences obtained when different samples are used to determine the relationship between these characteristic parameters of shale formations. The main objective of this effort is to translate the results of the PPT tests to actual drilling conditions. At that point, the formation-drilling fluid chemical potential borehole instability model would be validated and updated in real-time to predict borehole (in)stabilities.