Horizontal shale wells are inherently prone to slugging through a mechanism completely comparable to terrain slugging in pipeline-riser systems. This slugging can lead to large fluctuations in the sand face pressure, which may degrade the quality of hydraulically generated fracture systems. This slugging can be mitigated either by operational procedures such as wellhead choking, or through well designs including smaller tubing sizes. In addition, well stability can be enhanced through the use of several artificial lift systems, including gas lift, rod pumping and plunger lift. The stability of shale wells under either natural flow or any of these artificial lift systems can be simulated and analyzed using the transient multiphase flow program, OLGA. In addition, OLGA simulations can aid in the optimization of the artificial lift system design. Several examples of this simulation application will be shown.