Odebrecht, the Brazil based engineering firm last week reported its oil and gas unit had received about $400 million investment from Temasek, the Singapore state owned investor. In a press release, the firm said the investment marks a significant move in the growth of Odebrecht Oleo e Gas. The unit is mulling plans to invest around $3.5 billion in the coming three years in the Brazilian oil services market.

The move is mainly aimed at taking advantage of the country’s thriving oil services market that is expected to grow as Brazil goes for its deep water oil reserves off its coast. As it is already, Odebrecht Oleo e Gas has gotten orders for the set up of five rigs for Petrobras, the Brazilian state owned oil and gas giant.

Petrobras is keen on purchasing a majority of its offshore exploration equipment from local suppliers in a bid to support the naval industry and bolster domestic economy. Petrobras plans $224 billion of investments over five years to turn Brazil into a major oil exporter by developing the reserves buried deep under the ocean floor in a region known as the subsalt.

Temasek, the Singaporean state investor with an international staff of 380 people is ranked the world’s eighth-largest sovereign wealth fund by the UK research firm Preqin. It had a portfolio of $134 billion as of March 31st this year and is the smaller of Singapore’s two sovereign wealth funds. It is an active shareholder and investor in financial services, telecommunications & media, technology, transportation, industrials, life sciences, consumer, real estate, energy & resources.

Odebrecht Oleo e Gas also charters and operates floating platforms known as FPSOs that are widely used by Brazil’s oil industry to produce from offshore fields. The firm is a Brazilian business conglomerate in the fields of Engineering & Construction and Chemicals & Petrochemicals. The company has a presence in South America, Central America and the Caribbean, North America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Odebrecht’s corporative structure is composed of five operating/support companies namely Construtora Norberto Odebrecht S.A., its engineering and construction company, based in Rio de Janeiro and Braskem its chemicals/petrochemicals company, based in São Paulo. The support ones are OCS – Odebrecht Administradora e Corretora de Seguros Ltda and Odeprev, plus the Odebrecht Foundation, which is a non-profit organization that supports social and environmental development programs.