Shareholders were unhappy, since the income did not increase sufficiently, thus somewhat lower dividends are likely. In 2006, $32.6 billion was distributed to shareholders, more in 2007.
Like other oil companies with a large refining business, they have paid more for each barrel of oil as producing countries raised prices as demand increased, but costs passed on to the buyers of refined products are lower than the increase for their crude purchases.

As new refineries now are being built near the crude sources, more and more oil will be shipped in the refined state, reducing costs. Exxon-Mobil is one of the companies building refineries and petrochemical plants nearer the sources, e. g. Saudi Arabia and Emirates; they have a large petrochemical operation in Singapore, and have signed contracts for refining and petrochemical plants in China.

If one examines the Fortune list of 500 largest corporations, it is evident that profit as a percent of revenue is higher for a number of companies than it is for Exxon-Mobil.
In 2006, Citigroup, Microsoft, Bank of America, Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, Intel, etc., made more profits relative to revenue, and were able to pay, in some cases, better dividends to their investors.