For some years now, the production outlook for Woodside has been dominated by Pluto LNG.

Woodside has a 90% stake in the project, which is expected to begin shipping LNG cargoes from March at a rate of up to 4.3 million tonnes per annum.

The company forecasts Pluto will produce between 17 and 21 million barrels of oil equivalent in 2012, while the "base business" will produce between 56 and 60MMboe.

Total production for Woodside (the base business plus Pluto) is forecast at between 73 and 81MMboe in 2012.

Interestingly, the bottom end of this range is no more than Woodside's 2010 production of 73MMboe.

So where's the transformation Pluto was going to bring?

The comparison is a little unfair because Pluto's initial months will include a ramp-up period and production is starting between two and three months into the calendar year.

In a full year at full capacity, Woodside's equity in Pluto LNG might reach 35MMboe.

This is reflected in Citibank's forecasts for 2013 production of 94MMboe across all of Woodside's projects.

But there's still a big hole to be accounted for.

In the February 2007 presentation of Woodside's annual results for 2006, the company forecast the base business would produce around 100MMboe by 2011.

That's without any contribution from Pluto, which was still a few months away from sanction.

Where did it all go?

Some of the production assets were sold, including Chinguetti and Otway Gas but disappointing performances by a number of new oil fields has done the most damage to Woodside's production hopes.

A good example is Enfield, commissioned in July 2006 and the first of Woodside's new oil production assets on the Exmouth Plateau.

The project was built at a cost of $1.5 billion with a production capacity of 100,000 barrels of oil per day.

Woodside owns 60% and is operator, with Mitsui holding a 40% stake.

Production in its first full year was well below expectations at just over 17 million barrels (an average of 47,000bopd).

By 2011, production had fallen to 6.9MMbbl or an average of less than 20,000bopd.

At the end of the December 2011 quarter, the daily rate had improved to about 23,000 barrels.

While natural field decline inevitably drags down annual output, few would have thought Enfield would struggle to produce a quarter of its design capacity just five years after commissioning.

Woodside's Vincent project has performed better.

Commissioned in 2008, Vincent was expected to produce oil at an initial daily rate of 50,000 barrels before stabilising at 40,000 barrels after the first year.

It failed to average these kinds of numbers in its early years but output is steadily improving.

Production in 2011 averaged 23,000bopd and jumped to more than 40,000bopd in the December quarter of 2011 after two infill wells were brought online.

Woodside is not the only operator to struggle with new oil projects on the Exmouth Plateau.

The BHP Billiton-operated Stybarrow project (BHPB 50%, Woodside 50%) began production in November 2007 with a design capacity of 80,000bopd.

The project produced more than 25MMbbl of oil in 2008, or almost 70,000bopd but output plunged to 11.4MMbbl in 2009 and only 4.2MMbbl in 2010.

It recovered to 7.8MMbbl in 2011 but this is still about 21,000bopd and a quarter of the design capacity just four years after production began.

The BHP Billiton-operated Pyrenees oil project is so far proving to be a great asset and with the rapid fade of Enfield, Vincent and Stybarrow, has emerged as the heavyweight among the new wave of oil projects in Australian waters.

Pyrenees produced a whopping 24.5MMbbl of oil in just nine months between its March 2010 commissioning and the end of the calendar year.

BHP Billiton's newly released December 2011 report reveals Pyrenees produced 22.4MMbbl in 2011, or an average of more than 60,000bopd.

This represents about a quarter of total Australian oil production, showing the importance of Pyrenees in Australia's oil self-sufficiency.

Recent declines in Woodside's oil production in Australia will be partially offset by the North West Shelf oil redevelopment project, which brought the NWS oil assets back onstream last September after an extended absence.

There's also the possibility of developing the Laverda and Opel discoveries, also on the Exmouth Plateau but these will not the fill the hole created by the disappointments of recent new oil projects.

Last week's 2011 production report from Santos shows some positive surprises for Australia's other big independent.

All eyes tend to be on Gladstone LNG and the transformation it will bring the Adelaide-based company when cargoes start shipping in 2014.

But Santos' base business has some surprisingly strong growth of its own.

Total production in 2011 was 47.2MMboe, down from 49.9MMboe in 2010 thanks to the sale of some equity in GLNG.

The company is forecasting total production between 51 and 55MMboe in 2012, although Citibank puts it close to the top of this range at 54.2MMboe.

Citibank then forecasts 58.6MMboe in 2013, with Gladstone LNG and PNG LNG still to come.

"There's a lot more to Santos than GLNG," Citibank senior energy analyst Mark Greenwood said.

"It has strong production growth from a number of projects kicking in over the next few years."

New projects now adding to Santos production include Devil Creek/Reindeer, with first gas produced last month and the Chim Sao oil project in Vietnam.

Other projects already sanctioned include the Cooper infill drilling program, Kipper in Bass Strait and Wortel in Asia.

The Fletcher Finucane oil development was added to this list earlier this month.

Santos forecasts total production of between 80 and 90MMboe by 2020, which is close to matching Woodside's post-Pluto production level.

The closing of the gap between Santos and Woodside is highlighted by Citibank's production forecasts over the next four years.

The investment bank expects Santos' annual production to lift from 47.2MMboe in 2011 to 75.8MMboe in 2015, an increase of 61%.

Over the same period, Woodside production is forecast to increase by 40% from 64.6MMboe in 2011 to 90.4MMboe in 2015.

Santos' strength has arguably been in the diversity of production assets, whereas Woodside has bet heavily on big Australian oil projects and, of course, LNG.

Australian oil has been disappointing, leaving the company with even more riding on its big-ticket LNG projects over the next five to 10 years.