I'm assuming you're wanting to do this for your undergraduate degree.

Well, the petroleum industry

would be around for a while, but the question is if that's what YOU want to do for the rest of your
career. I'd ask yourself if you've gone through what petroleum engineers have to learn in college and
see if you want to do that or have the academic skills to match. Petroleum engineering is usually an
offshoot of chemical engineering, so be ready for a lot of coursework in thermodynamics, fluids,
chemistry, as well as more petroleum-related things like drilling technology, geophysics, and some
geology.
Bear in mind that the petroleum industry doesn't just hire petroleum engineers. It is a very wide
industry that hires everyone from petroleum and chemical engineers to deal with processing the
petroleum, to mechanical and electrical engineers who design, maintain, operate the equipment, to
computer and systems engineers who deal with the information systems related to operations, right
down to mathematicians, statisticians, and economists who work with business people to figure out
financial and operational costs within the industry, and geologists and geophysicists who look for oil
and gas. Ask yourself what part of the petroleum industry that you like (exploration, working on a rig,
working at a refinery, sales, innovative green technology, transportation of petroleum products, etc),
then ask yourself whether a degree in petroleum engineering is right for you.
If you personally want to keep your future career open, I would recommend doing something general
like mechanical, electrical, chemical or systems engineering or even geophysics or geology for your
undergraduate, then focusing on petroleum engineering for your masters. This way, if you change your
mind and find that the petroleum industry is not what you expected it to be, you can always cross over
to another field with your bachelor's in something more general instead of petroleum engineering.
I strongly recommend visiting the Society of Petroleum Engineers website at www.spe.org along with
the academic programs offered by some universities, like Texas A&M University (www.pe.tamu.edu
one of the top in the US to offer Petroleum Engineering), University of Louisiana-Lafayette
(http://petroleum.louisiana.edu),University of Alaska-Fairbanks
(http://www.alaska.edu/uaf/cem/pete/), Colorado School of Mines
(http://www.mines.edu/PetroleumEngineerin... You'll also notice that most of these schools are located
in areas where the petroleum industry is of importance in in the US: Texas, Louisiana (much attention
given during this past summer's oil spill), Alaska, Colorado (rich in shale oil). In fact, I would even
email people at the universities and ask what they have to say.
Good luck in your studies!