Oil and gas company Total S.A. has appointed Maarten Scholten as senior vice president and general counsel. In this role, he is a member of Total's management committee.

Scholten assume the SVP and general counsel role from Peter Herbel, who retired in December 2013 after a 17-year career with the company. 

With almost 30 years of legal and financial experience in the oil industry, Scholten previously spent 20 years at oilfied services giant Schlumberger, where he was director of legal service, head of finance, president of Schlumberger Oilfield Services for Europe, Africa and CIS and director of mergers and acquisitions. Scholten started his career at Dutch law firm Loeff & van der Ploeg, now part of Allen & Overy