Typically, when the government wants to sell a public resource or asset to the private sector — as with the wireless spectrum — economists advise holding an auction so taxpayers get the highest price that the market will bear.

At the time, though, Congress determined that the market price was too low to cover its debt, according to John R. Campbell, publisher of CryoGas International and president of J. R. Campbell & Associates, one of the world’s leading consulting firms on gases. So instead lawmakers just set a minimum price for the government’s helium — one that was about twice what buyers were paying on the open market at the time.

At first, buyers balked. But over the decade that followed, demand for helium in the private sector increased so much — particularly in places like Taiwan and Korea, where the gas is used in manufacturing electronics — that the government’s price inevitably became the market one. Today, the price — still set by a government formula — is, if anything, lower than what the market would otherwise bear.

Just look at what has happened to the price of refined helium, the form of the gas sold to M.R.I. manufacturers and the like, which has nearly quadrupled since 2000.

The sky-high refined helium prices have forced Tokyo Disneyland to suspend the sale of balloons and disrupted the work of academic scientists who use helium for research projects in cryogenics and nanotechnology. And the shortages are about to get worse.

That’s because, due to an odd technicality in the helium privatization law enacted in 1996, the government will effectively end sales from the reserve once its debt is paid off — something that could happen as early as October, even though there’s still a huge reservoir of helium left in the till.

Walter L. Nelson, director of helium sourcing and supply chain at Air Products and Chemicals, told a Senate committee earlier this month that “30 percent of the worldwide supply will be essentially locked up, causing prices to skyrocket.” That, he said, will leave some users with no ability to get the gas and will mean “chaos in the economic sectors that now rely on helium.”