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HOUSTON (Dow Jones)–U.S. regulators on Thursday for the first time approved the use of a floating production, storage and offloading vessel in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, a move that could help spur the exploitation of distant offshore fields.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement said Petroleo Brasileiro S.A.’s (PBR) Petrobras America unit could begin using a floating production, storage and offloading facility, also known as an FPSO, to produce oil and gas at its deepwater Chinook-Cascade project. The FPSO will have a production capacity of 80,000 barrels of oil per day and 16 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. BOEMRE, which oversees oil and gas production in federal waters, said production is expected to begin in the near future.

Unlike most offshore producing platforms, which extract the oil and gas from the depths of the ocean and send it onshore via a pipeline, FPSO vessels collect the oil and offload it unto tanker shuttles. That allows oil companies to keep pushing further offshore, and to move their expensive facilities out of harm’s way if a storm approaches. FPSOs are widely used in offshore Brazil and West Africa.

The Cascade-Chinook project is about 165 miles offshore Louisiana, in 8,200 feet of water. Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company, owns 100% of the Cascade field and 66.67% of the Chinook field. French oil giant Total S.A. (TOT) owns 33.33% of the Chinook field.

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