In fact Range's unhedged realized price for the quarter was approximately $3.20 per mcfe, which was $0.51 above the NYMEX Henry Hub equivalent price of $2.69.
In fact Range's pre-hedge margin improved by over $1 per mcfe in the first quarter when compared to the 2020 average.
Given the improved fundamental backdrop for natural gas liquids with approximately 65% of our activity in the liquids-rich window this year, Range is very well positioned to continue to benefit from this dynamic.
During the quarter, Range was also able to benefit from improved daily prices in the natural gas market, realizing a natural gas differentials that was $0.08 better than the midpoint of guidance only partially offset by higher transportation fuel costs, again benefiting margins and cash flow.
On the back with this improved pricing, Range generated $193 million in cash flow from operations before changes in working capital, and with capital spending, coming in at just $105 million for the quarter, Range generated solid free cash flow.
Touching on the all-in capital investment of $105 million on the quarter, it's clear that the team's operational execution was superb.
When combining our low well costs, strong recoveries, and shallow base decline of under 20%, Range is operating at a high level of capital efficiency that provides a solid foundation for generating sustainable free cash flow, what further differentiate Range is our ability to deliver this level of efficiency for an extended period of time giving our multi-decade core inventory.
For some added context on our inventory, Range is turning to sales approximately 60 wells this year, but we have approximately 2,000 Marcellus locations with EURs that are greater than 2 Bcfe per 1,000 foot of lateral.
First quarter capital spending came in at $105 million or approximately 25% of our 2021 program budget.
Our first quarter production level of 2.08 Bcf equivalent per day was a direct result of recent strong well results combined with exceptional field run time for the quarter due in large part to the near flawless winter operations planning and execution by our production operations team.
Underpinning our first quarter production including turning to sales, 16 wells spread across are dry, wet, and super-rich acreage.
Our Q1 turn-in lines consisted of an average horizontal length in excess of 11,500 feet and added just under 200,000 producing lateral feet to Range's Appalachia assets.
The results of these turn-in lines increased Range's average oil production to a level exceeding 8,000 barrels per day in Q1 and, has increased overall liquids production in similar levels seen during the first half of 2020.
This level of wet production contribution is expected to continue through the end of this year with second quarter production projected at approximately 2.1 Bcfe per day.
This will position us to achieve our 2021 maintenance target of 2.15 Bcfe per day through additional margin enhancing liquids production while spending $425 million or less.
During the first quarter, 15 wells were drilled across our dry, wet, and super-rich footprint.
Four of these wells are in the top 20 lateral links for Range's Marcellus program history with all four exceeding 17,800 feet.
Drilling efficiencies continued with nearly three-quarters of the new wells drilled on pads with existing production, coupled with a 5% increase in daily lateral footage drilled compared to 2020.
On the completion side, 16 wells were completed during the quarter.
Overall, the team completed just under 1,200 frac stages while setting a first quarter winter operations efficiency record by averaging over eight frac stages per day.
This efficiency level exceeds Range's previous best first quarter in winter operations record by 14%.
The water operations team built upon prior water recycling successes by utilizing nearly 2 million barrels of third-party produced water, a first quarter record and as a result, reduced overall completion costs for the quarter by more than $4.5 million.
Lease operating expense for the first quarter was consistent with our prior year's Appalachia level and remained low at $0.09 per Mcfe.
These efforts generated a field runtime that exceeded 99% with a weather-related production impact of less than 0.5 million cubic feet per day for the quarter, a remarkable achievement.
The average lateral length of the original wells was just over 3,000 feet per well.
In stark contrast, the average lateral length of the new wells is nearly 16,000 feet per well, more than 5 times longer.
No additional earth disturbance was needed for 5 times the acreage development and no additional production, gathering, and processing infrastructure was required to add these new wells.
To put this into perspective, Range has close to 250 developed pads in Southwest PA and as of today, we've returned 84 of these locations to drill additional wells.
The three new wells were completed late last year, utilizing our contracted electric fracturing fleet which displaced 470,000 gallons of diesel fuel.
This reduced our cost by approximately $300,000 per well along with large reductions and associated emissions.
40% of the water used to complete these new wells was recycled water from Range's producing wells along with third-party water, sourced from our water sharing process.
The balance of the water was pumped from our water pipeline network, which was installed nearly a decade ago, further reducing emissions associated with truck traffic by more than 13, 400 truck trips.
The average initial production of these wells exceeded 44 million cubic feet equivalent per day including more than 9,700 barrels per day of combined condensate and natural gas liquids per well, placing them in the top tier of wells in our Marcellus program history.
These efforts have underpinned our operational efficiency gains and give us confidence in the durability around keeping our drilling complete cost below $600 per foot, all while achieving our environmental goals and producing best-in-class wells.
As a result of this increased inspection frequency, an additional 7,400 metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions was removed from our program, resulting in a 67% reduction for those related components.
Consistent with our environmental results, Range's safety performance saw similar improvements delivering an over 30% improvement in recordable incidents for the quarter, which was the best Q1 performance versus the prior five years.
Preliminary results for US propane and butane or LPG reveal that Q1 2021 domestic demand was 13% higher year-on-year while supply decreased by 4%.
Similarly, condensate supply in the Northeast is estimated to have decreased by 15% to 20% year-on-year.
At $24.83 per barrel, Range's Mont Belvieu equivalent barrel was at 38% over the prior quarter and 83% compared to the first quarter of 2020.
Propane prices led the way, increasing nearly 60% versus the prior quarter and 140% versus Q1 of 2020.
Additionally Range's premium to a Mont Belvieu equivalent barrel increased by approximately $1.50 per barrel versus the prior quarter as Range realizes this highest premium to Mont Belvieu in the company's history.
This past winter, propane posted its largest seasonal withdrawal and well over a decade, leaving the end of March propane stocks at a 33% deficit to last year and a 17% deficit to the five-year average.
As a result, we expect propane prices to transact at levels at or above 60% of WTI crude this fall and the upcoming winter.
On the natural gas side, cold weather during mid-Q1 equated to the third coldest February, when looking at the past 10 years.
Through utilization of our diverse transportation portfolio, Q1 resulted in a differential of $0.14 under NYMEX, including basis hedging.
Within this constructive outlook for natural gas, Range is on track with its differential guidance of $0.30 to $0.40 for the year.
Cash flow from operations before working capital was $193 million compared to $105 million in capital spending.
Significant improvements in free cash flow compared to past periods were driven by a 50% improvement in pre-hedge realized prices per unit of production versus the prior-year period, which reached $3.20 per mcfe in the first quarter.
This realized price per unit is $0.51 above NYMEX Henry Hub, driven by improved natural gas basis and importantly further enhanced by a 77% increase in NGL price per barrel, which reached $26.35 pre-hedge.
Realized NGL price on Mmcfe [Phonetic] basis equates to $4.39 per mcfe and condensate realizations equate to $8.17 per mcfe.
Additionally, Range's NGL prices exceeded a Mont Belvieu NGL barrel by $1.52 due to our unique portfolio of domestic and international sales contracts.
Lease operating expenses declined over 40% year-over-year to $0.09 per unit on the back of consistent, efficient, Marcellus operations, despite the winter weather and the divestiture of higher-cost assets.
Cash G&A expenses declined to $28 million or $0.15 per unit in the first quarter.
Cash interest expense was roughly $55 million.
For perspective, an increase of $1 per NGL barrel equates to approximately $0.01 per mcfe and cost.
Turning to the balance sheet, Range has diligently and successfully managed the debt profile, such that liability management projects reduced bond maturities through 2024 by almost $1.2 billion while at the same time improving liquidity to nearly $2 billion.
During the first quarter, we issued new bonds due 2029 in the amount of $600 million, which combined with the reaffirmation of our facilities, $3 billion borrowing base and $2.4 billion in commitments provide substantial liquidity and a strong evidence of what we believe is durable asset value.
During the first quarter, we called in $63 million in near-term maturities of senior and senior subordinated notes closing on the redemption in early April.
As can be seen in the recently filed proxy, leverage metrics have been incorporated into long-term compensation criteria with the target of 1.5 times debt to EBITDA were better.

Summary:
This will position us to achieve our 2021 maintenance target of 2.15 Bcfe per day through additional margin enhancing liquids production while spending $425 million or less.
Within this constructive outlook for natural gas, Range is on track with its differential guidance of $0.30 to $0.40 for the year.