Oil has been produced from offshore locations since the 1950s. Originally, all oil platforms sat on the seabed, but as exploration moved to deeper waters and more distant locations in the 1970s, floating production systems came to be used. Common abbreviations for major types of floating production systems are FPSO (floating production, storage, and offloading system), FSO (floating storage and offloading system), and FSU (floating storage unit, equivalent to FSO).

Floating production systems are large ships (about one half of existing systems are converted oil tankers) equipped with processing facilities and moored to a location for a long period. Oil wells on the seabed produce oil which arrives on board of the FPSO through pipelines and risers. The oil is stored in the hull of the FPSO and periodically offloaded to shuttle tankers.

FPSOs eliminate the need to lay expensive long-distance pipelines from the oil well to an onshore terminal. They can also be used economically in smaller oil fields which can be exhausted in a few years and do not justify the expense of installing a fixed oil platform. Once the field is depleted, the FPSO can be moved to a new location.