With oil prices above $100 a barrel, is it possible that Exxon Mobil, the biggest of Big Oil, could still fall short?

Yes.

While reporting a 17 percent gain in first-quarter earnings, the company has come up shy of analysts' forecasts as its profit margins in the production of chemicals and gasoline were pressured. Revenue surged 33 percent, to $116.85 billion, but still less than estimates.

"Higher crude oil and natural gas realizations, driven by record worldwide crude oil prices, were partly offset by lower refining and chemical margins, lower production volumes, and higher operating costs," the company said in a statement. Earnings from refining fell 39 percent, to $1.17 billion in the quarter. "Upstream" earnings, or earnings from oil and natural gas production, surged 45 percent, to $8.8 billion.

The miss is all the more remarkable because the other global oil giants—Royal Dutch Shell and BP—reported strong quarterly gains earlier this week that surpassed expectations. And it came a day after members of Exxon Mobil's founding family, the Rockefellers, criticized what they called the company's focus on the short term and not doing enough to diversify into alternative fuels.

Still, the numbers from Exxon Mobil are awfully big: first-quarter earnings of $10.89 billion, not that far off from the $11.66 billion recorded in the fourth quarter of last year, an all-time record for any company.

And with gasoline prices heading toward $4 a gallon, few (other than its investors) will feel sorry for Exxon's miss.

And investors don't have that much to complain about: Its shares are up 13 percent since February, the company has bought $8 billion of shares this quarter, and it has raised its quarterly dividend by 10 percent.

In an election year when many Americans are struggling with rising food costs, sinking home values, and higher fuel and gasoline prices, Big Oil can be a convenient target. There may even be renewed calls for a new tax on oil "windfall" profits.

"Exxon is clearly putting a damper on the market," Jim Awad, chairman of W.P. Stewart Asset Management, told Reuters. "I think they might be understating the numbers going into a political environment that's hostile for oil."