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West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin III has forced Democrats to drop or weaken a second major climate change provision from the sweeping social policy and environmental spending bill the White House hopes to complete this week, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Manchin, a centrist Democrat from one of the country’s top coal and gas producing states, wants to repeal or replace a provision that would impose a charge on methane emissions, a powerful planet-warming pollutant that emanates from oil and gas. wells. It has already been effectively billing for the strongest climate change provisionA program to quickly shut down coal and gas-fired power plants and replace them with wind and solar power.

Democrats are racing this week to finalize the details of the budget bill. President Biden is gearing up to attend a major climate summit in Glasgow this weekend and hopes to point to the bill to prove that the world’s largest historic greenhouse polluter, the United States, is finally taking strong and strong steps to cut its fossil. fuel emissions – and forcing other countries to do the same. Mr. Biden promised that the United States would reduce its emissions by 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.

Analysts have found that it would be technically possible, though difficult, for the United States to achieve this goal without passing the clean electricity bill that Mr. Manchin opposes. The broader spending package still includes around $300 billion in tax credits for wind and solar, and analysts say this could get the United States up to about half of Mr. Biden’s goal. But repealing the methane fee law could further weaken his case in Glasgow.

A spokesperson for Mr. Manchin did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for the senator who wrote the methane charge law said the law has yet to be passed from the bill.

“The methane charge is not out of the box,” said Rachel Levitan, spokesperson for Delaware Democratic Senator Thomas Carper, who chairs the Senate Environment Committee. “President Carper is working to get robust climate provisions in the reconciliation law and is actively negotiating to ensure the bill meaningfully reduces greenhouse gas emissions.”

Another person familiar with the matter said Mr Manchin seemed open to negotiating the details of the methane charge to make it easier and cheaper for natural gas companies to comply.

Separately, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to release a draft regulation this week that will force oil and gas producers to monitor and shut down methane spills from existing oil and gas wells. Among Mr Manchin’s objections to the fee could be a repetition of these rules, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Senate Democratic leaders promised that broader budget legislation, which could run between 5,000 and 10,000 pages, will be finalized this week, while people familiar with the process said Democrats are more likely to adopt a broader framework before Mr Trump. Biden went to Glasgow and said that lawmakers would have to announce to the world that they were going to pass the bill really soon.

“The whole world now knows the name Manchin,” said Rich Gold, a Democratic energy lobbyist and former EPA adviser. “So if I go to Glasgow and have the piece of paper representing the deal and Senator Manchin’s name on the bottom, I think the Germans will be fine.”