With openmpi version >= 3 multithreading is enabled by default and there is no 'treads' USE flag in openmpi ebuild. But virtual/mpi still depends on openmpi[thread?] thus rejecting openmpi.
commit fff07ea867f8fe4fd6ab61d18a3e1687dd73970f Author: Justin Bronder <jsbronder@gentoo.org> Date: Wed Feb 7 17:28:31 2018 -0500 virtual/mpi: Update sys-cluster/openmpi dependency >=sys-cluster/openmpi-3 no longer has the threads USE flag as the feature it used to control is now always enabled by upstream. Fixes #645952. Thanks to Eugene Shalygin for the report. Package-Manager: Portage-2.3.13, Repoman-2.3.3