When John Browne talks, big oil listens

With a double-whammy of huge deals - a $57 billion agreement last August to buy Amoco and a $27 billion agreement last April to buy Atlantic Richfield - CEO John Browne has taken BP into the big leagues: It is now the second-biggest publicly traded oil producer. That is a remarkable turnaround. Seven years ago BP was on the ropes. What Browne will do next is a matter of speculation throughout the industry. He professes to be no visionary but rather a pragmatist who has built an opportunistic, shareholder-value-driven company. Now, he has to complete the Arco deal and integrate that company into BP Amoco. And then he has to take all those new assets, figure out which ones to keep, and make what is left grow faster than those of his rivals. Most important, Browne must develop a strategy in natural gas.