I was a physics major, then civil engineering MS, now geophysics phd student. Keep in mind that petroleum engineering is very specialized. While you're surely capable enough from a math/science perspective, there would be a lot of catching up to do in other things, and many grad departments aren't flexible about this. Civil engineering, on the other hand, is very broad, and I was able to do research that could have easily been called applied physics.
When I think of applied geophysics, along the lines of your interests, I think of a few other schools in addition to the ones you mentioned: Colorado School of Mines, Rice, UT Austin, and Stanford. All of these have reservoir modeling groups within geophysics departments, and close ties to oil/gas. And I do think you'll have much better luck at geophysics departments than petroleum engineering.
electric got a reaction from Hanyuye in MSc in Geophysics