Carl Icahn’s effort to push regulatory compliance off the backs of gas refiners is killing energy patch speculators.

Icahn, who owns CVR Energy, a relatively small refiner, wants the Trump administration to force fuel blenders — and not refiners — to comply with an obscure EPA rule that enforces ethanol mandates.

Complying with the EPA renewable energy rules could cost CVR $250 million this year, according to Bloomberg — even though Icahn’s refinery doesn’t blend ethanol into gas.

The cost is tied to CVR and other relatively small refiners having to buy Renewable Identification Numbers, or RINs, as proof they blended gas.

RIN prices had been soaring last year as speculators bought them up.

But if Icahn’s push to have blenders and not refiners tackle the cost of RINs, speculators will no longer be able to profit from selling them to the likes of CVR — crushing the market.

Already, the market seems to believe Icahn will win his battle.

The price of RINs has fallen nearly 60 percent since Nov. 1 — to 39 cents a gallon on Wednesday, down from 91 cents Nov. 1.

The EPA requires every gallon of gas to include roughly 10 percent ethanol.

Pushing compliance downstream to gas blenders would benefit not only CVR but also mom-and-pop gas stations, Bill Douglass, who heads the Small Retailers Coalition, told The Post.

Roughly 60 percent of the nation’s 154,000 gas stations are mom-and-pop operations that are hurt when RIN prices soar as national gas retailers blend and profit from speculation and lower pump prices.

The current system of making small refiners pay for RINs is “so stacked against the little guy,” Douglass said.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen, a government watchdog group, said on Wednesday it will ask lawmakers to investigate whether Icahn should have been subject to lobbying disclosure laws when he advised Trump to overhaul the US biofuels program.

Icahn said in a Wednesday editorial he had vetted his activities with lawyers.

Public Citizen, Icahn said, is on a “witch hunt.”

The falling price of RINS is hurting speculators, including Koch Supply & Trading, Murphy Oil, Koch Supply & Trading, Sheetz Inc. and Sunoco, sources said.

It is not known when new EPA boss Scott Pruitt will rule on RIN compliance.