On Sunday, two major utilities canceled plans to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 600-mile conduit to carry fracked gas from West Virginia through Virginia to North Carolina, despite a favorable Supreme Court ruling just weeks earlier.

On Monday, a federal court ordered the Dakota Access pipeline to shut down by Aug. 5 after finding that the controversial oil conduit, which has spilled dozens of times since construction ended in 2017, fell short of safety requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.

The dual defeats, less than 24 hours apart, come at a moment when weak demand for oil, swelling debt and mounting concerns over climate change are forcing gas companies out of business and oil giants to dramatically downgrade the value of their assets.

But analysts say the decisions also signal that the legal tides are turning against fossil fuel infrastructure. Environmentalists are mounting increasingly sophisticated challenges, and clean energy is eroding the dominance the oil and gas industry once held over the electricity, heating and transportation markets.

Pipeline projects that once seemed inevitable, particularly with the Trump administrations unequivocal support, now look like increasingly risky bets as the president slumps in the polls and surveys show growing demand for aggressive federal action on climate change.

The chickens are coming home to roost, said Suzanne Mattei, an energy policy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a think tank. The companies behind both pipelines, she added, ended up investing a lot of time and effort into something and didnt listen to the warning signs.

Over the past three years, all signs coming from the federal government pointed to go for pipeline projects. President Donald Trump signed executive orders to hasten construction on the Dakota Access and Keystone XL, a long-proposed oil pipeline from Canada, during his first week in the White House. Since then, the Trump administration eased rules on methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure, nixed regulations forcing federal agencies to consider climate change projections when permitting projects, and proposed severely limiting NEPA reviews.

Those efforts accelerated in recent months. As the United States became the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in March, the administration halted environmental enforcement. In June, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule change limiting states power to oversee permits for federally approved pipelines under the Clean Water Act.

The new restriction came on the heels of New York States decision in mid-May to reject the Williams Pipeline, a proposed gas pipeline that would have carried fracked gas from Pennsylvania to homes in parts of New York City and Long Island.