A spokeswoman for Mr. Manchin did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokeswoman for the senator who is writing the methane fee legislation said it has not yet been excised from the bill.
“The methane fee is not out of the package,” said Rachel Levitan, a spokeswoman for Senator Thomas Carper, the Delaware Democrat who leads the Senate Environment Committee. “Chairman Carper is working to get robust climate provisions in the reconciliation bill and is in active negotiations to ensure that the bill meaningfully reduces greenhouse gas emissions.”
Another person familiar with the matter said that Mr. Manchin appeared open to negotiating the details of the methane fee to make it easier and cheaper for natural gas companies to comply.
Separately, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to release a draft regulation as soon as this week that would compel oil and gas producers to monitor and plug methane leaks from existing oil and gas wells. Among Mr. Manchin’s objections to the methane pollution fee is that it could be duplicative of those rules, according to the two people familiar with the matter.
While Senate Democratic leaders have pledged that the broader budget legislation — which could run between 5,000 and 10,000 pages — will be completed this week, people familiar with the process said it was more likely that Democrats would agree to a broad-brush framework of a deal before Mr. Biden travels to Glasgow, and that he would have to make the case to the world that lawmakers would indeed soon pass the bill.