Much attention shonld be paid to a large FPSO moored permanently in an oil field with water depth of only about 20 m, since shallow water effects on the hydrodynamics may bring about collision and damage. A 160kDWT FPSO with a permanent soft yoke mooring system is investigated with various shallow water depths and focuses are the low frequency surge motion and mooring load. Computation for the FPSO system is made based on linear 3-D potential fluid theory and time-domain numerical simnlation method. Corresponding model test is carried out in the ocean engineering basin of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It is shown that, in the surge natural period, low frequency surge motion and mooring force increase remarkably with the decrease of water depth. Especially, the snmller the ratio of water depth and draught is, the quicker the increase is. The shallow water effects shonld be taken into account carefully for determining the design load of a single point mooring system.